The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) launched in May 2025 to the horror of the humanitarian community. Experienced providers of aid recognised immediately that there is absolutely nothing humanitarian about the US-based company with its remit of delivering militarised aid. This abuse of the term “humanitarian” is intentional and must not be allowed to become accepted parlance.

“Political language,” George Orwell said, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”. The pre-emptive horror of experienced aid providers was immediately validated as Palestinians began reporting indiscriminate killings by Israeli Forces at the sites of GHF operations. Israeli soldiers have since also stated they were ordered to fire at civilians seeking food aid. The UN has recorded the killing of 859 Palestinians at GHF sites since their inception. My friends and colleagues in Gaza report many more are injured. Daily they repair and dress the serious wounds of civilians sustained while corralled by Israel into seeking the most basic foodstuffs in militarised areas.

The distribution of food in conflict and disaster is the informal remit of families and communities affected by the events, and the formal task of well-established humanitarian organisations co-ordinated by the United Nations, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNRWA — the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. The UN-coordinated system of delivering aid is explicitly and necessarily non-militarised. The goal is to assist people, not to shoot them. 

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was ostensibly formed to enable the Israeli-controlled distribution of food aid without the involvement of the UN. Its launch followed the complete eleven-week Israeli blockade of any form of humanitarian relief into Gaza. This was in turn an escalation of the severely restricted passage of food, medicines and fuel into Gaza since 7 October 2023. The warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2024 for the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant include accusations of intentionally depriving the civilian population of Gaza of the basic necessities of life—- including food, water and medical supplies.

Rows upon rows of trucks filled with aid are lined up at crossings into Gaza and prevented entry by the Israeli State. I saw them myself as I entered and left Gaza in April 2024 and I know them to continue. WFP advises that

while our warehouses across the Gaza Strip are empty, more than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance — enough to feed 1 million people for up to 4 months — is ready to be brought into Gaza if the blockade is lifted.

In June, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OPT Head of Office, Jonathan Whittall, described people being “shot or shelled trying to reach US-Israeli distribution sites purposefully set up in militarized zones” while others have “been killed when Israeli forces have fired on Palestinian crowds waiting for food”. On 11 July 2025, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that its field hospital had treated over 3400 weapon-wounded patients and recorded more than 250 fatalities since the establishment of the militarised aid sites. The Committee, as any aid worker will assure you, is not prone to hyperbole. The Middle East Director for Save The Children, Ahmad Alhendawi, has said: “this is not a humanitarian operation – it’s a death trap”.

Further even to the active shootings at militarised GHF distribution points, on 20 July 2025 WFP reported Israeli tanks and snipers firing on desperate civilians awaiting a convoy as it crossed the Zikim border point. They described the loss of “countless lives” . To be a civilian in Gaza right now is to encounter death traps at multiple turns. In plain sight, Israel is repeatedly abrogating its responsibilities under International Humanitarian Law.

Aid is a word long-bastardised for political use. I flinch each time I see a headline about US “military aid” to Israel. It takes a smidge more effort to corrupt the term “humanitarian”, but the precedent is nonetheless abundant. In 2014, as the United States bombed the Syrian town of Kobani, General John R Allen said: “We are striking the targets around Kobani for humanitarian purposes.” In the same year, Vladimir Putin described the military takeover of Crimea as a “humanitarian mission“.

War has its own language, and indeed its own justifications. It does not require the language of humanitarianism. Doublespeak obfuscates and, left unchecked, it escalates. We are watching that escalation in real time, played out as absurdist Orwellian cover for what is neither aid nor relief, but rather the use of “aid” as a new way of killing.

Israel has been actively killing civilians in Gaza for the past twenty-one months at an unprecedented rate. In February 2024 my colleagues and I wrote in the BMJ Global Health of Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine. We wrote of fast violence on a background of slow death. Necropolitics, in this instance, is the power invoked by the Israeli State to “dictate the terms of life and death [of Palestinians], and ultimately who lives and who dies.” A colleague of mine in Gaza has described the events at the non-UN militarized distribution sites as “the most visceral embodiment of necropolitics”.

Do not be deceived by the humanitarian label given to this militarised organisation. All funding to this militant group must be withdrawn and the organisation disbanded. Israel must allow the unimpeded flow of genuine humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza as per its most basic obligations under the Geneva Conventions. This extreme distortion of humanitarianism where even queuing for food exposes Palestinians to the risk of mass murder must end today.