UN withholding aid to Gaza to fuel ‘famine’ narrative
The United Nations is withholding tons of food from Gazans as it continues to accuse Israel of starving civilians.
The Israel Defense Forces send an average of 100 food trucks into Gaza each day through the Kerem Shalom crossing. Once on the Gaza side, it falls to UN officials to distribute the aid. Last week, however, footage of the area revealed 950 trucks containing roughly 2,500 tons of food sitting idly on the Gaza side of the crossing, not being distributed.
The UN, a longtime ally of Hamas, has been flustering efforts to deliver aid to Gaza while continuing to accuse the Israeli government of causing mass starvation. The UN has also been pressuring agencies not to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an aid distribution organization created by the Trump administration to ensure the delivery of food directly to Gaza residents without the opportunity for Hamas to steal the free food and then sell it to residents. The GHF has so far delivered over 92 million meals directly to Gazans. On Wednesday alone, it delivered 41 trucks carrying 2,273,040 meals.
GHF begs UN to let it deliver food
Last week, the GHF offered to deliver the food being withheld by the UN.
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for weeks on the need for more aid in Gaza while we’ve seen aid by the UN and other organizations being piled near the borders but not being delivered,” said GHF Interim Director John Acree on Wednesday.
A day before, GHF Executive Chairman Johnnie Moore urged UN Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher to allow GHF to distribute the aid piling up. “Our door remains open,” Moore wrote to Fletcher. “We are prepared to support the safe and accountable delivery of UN aid to Gazans who desperately need it. But time is short. People are starving, and food is sitting idle out of their reach. We cannot let politics stand in the way.”
GHF spokesman Chapin Fay, standing in Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing, said he saw “tons of aid from UN organizations sitting on the ground undelivered… desperately needed flour rotting on the side of the road; rice from Jordan baking for over 90 days; expired medical supplies.”
UN: Israel must provide security but we will not allow it
The UN has also demanded Israel protect the aid while simultaneously forbidding Israeli security forces from doing so. At a recent press briefing, UN Secretary-General António Guterres's spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, was unable to clarify the organization’s position.
“On the one hand, you’re saying Israel is responsible for the security of humanitarian [aid] delivery in Gaza; on the other hand, the UN will not accept IDF-provided security to these convoys. So I’m not sure how you reconcile that,” a reporter asked Dujarric.
Dujarric dodged the question with a puzzling response.
“I think we reconcile it by trying to find a way to keep our people and the community as safe as possible,” he said before hurriedly moving on.
Last week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry released a video of Hamas terrorists gorging themselves on food.
