A former US Special Forces officer has revealed that he resigned from his position at the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) after witnessing Israeli forces firing upon Palestinian civilians at aid distribution centers.
Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Aguilar, who worked for the GHF in May and June 2025, told the BBC on Friday that in his entire career, he had never witnessed such a level of “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”
He said he saw the Israeli regime forces and US contractors using live ammunition, artillery, mortar rounds, and tank fire on civilians and hungry people waiting for food at the aid distribution sites.
“I witnessed the forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car of civilians that were simply driving away from the site. I witnessed mortar rounds being fired at the crowds of people to keep them controlled,” Aguilar said.
“I’ve never witnessed that in all the places I’ve been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza at the hands of the [Israeli forces] and US contractors. Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces, without a doubt. Using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, firing tank rounds into unarmed civilians is a war crime.”
Pointing the finger of blame at those establishing the GHF, a joint Israeli-US scheme replacing the United Nations food distribution operation in Gaza, the American contractor said that at best they were “amateur, inexperienced, and untrained” as they had “no idea of how to conduct operations at this magnitude.”
The scheme, which bypasses the UN-led aid system, emerged after Israel had long been using food as a weapon of war against the Palestinians in the besieged strip.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinian aid seekers in Gaza since May, mostly near sites run by the GHF.
Nearly 170 non-governmental organizations have called for the immediate discontinuation of the controversial GHF program, and called for a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed in the war-torn territory until March, when the Israeli regime imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has raised the alarm that a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million population faces famine-like conditions.
Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that at least 123 Palestinians died from starvation and malnutrition, including 83 children.
The Israeli occupation forces have launched an assault on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, resulting in the killing of 59,676 civilians, the majority of whom were children and women, and the injury of 143,965 others.