'Indefensible': Human Rights Watch Rips US Complicity in Israeli Massacres of Starving Gazans

Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that the U.S.-backed Israeli military's massacres of Palestinians seeking food aid in the besieged Gaza Strip are "serious violations of international law and war crimes."

Since the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the strip in May, Israeli forces have gunned down Palestinians in the vicinity of the organization's hubs on a near-daily basis. Between May 27 and July 31, the Israeli military has killed more than 850 Palestinians near GHF sites, according to United Nations figures.

"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). "U.S.-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."

HRW stressed that the U.S. is complicit in Israeli war crimes—including the killings of desperate Palestinians seeking humanitarian assistance—given its continued arming of Israel's military and its support for GHF, which Human Rights Watch noted is "run by two U.S. private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military."

"On June 26, one month after SRS started distributing aid at the sites, the U.S. government announced it was allocating US$30 million to GHF," HRW observed. "The source of funding for GHF's first month of distributions remains unknown; in its letter to Human Rights Watch, counsel for GHF said it 'received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel,' without specifying the government."

"The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals," the group added. "The United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations."

As part of its report, HRW interviewed people who are or were on the ground in Gaza and directly witnessed the Israeli military's violence near aid sites.

"One Palestinian man told Human Rights Watch that he left his home at about 9 pm, trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 am the next day," the group said. "On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site."

HRW also spoke to Anthony Bailey Aguilar, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions. Aguilar told the group that he witnessed on "numerous occasions" Israeli officers ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians near food distribution sites.

Additionally, Aguilar and Palestinian eyewitnesses told HRW that they saw "armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions."

"It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control," Wille said. "States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians."