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gaza humanitarian foundation
How the US Weaponizes Starvation and Aid in Gaza and Cuba
In both Cuba and Palestine, the United States is deploying its barbaric methods of producing mass suffering in order to bring about political and economic submission.
Feb 10, 2026
Last week, the US government announced it would be sending $6 million in aid to Cuba, on top of the $3 million it sent in January after Hurricane Melissa. This aid package might appear contrary to the significant escalation of the 66-year-long US criminal blockade, which has expanded to an all-out fuel blockade since December, with attacks on Venezuela, but it is in fact a core tenet of it.
This maneuver seeks to exploit the US-manufactured energy and fuel crisis to bolster opposition groups, substantiate propaganda against the Cuban government and revolution, and force the island into total dependency and submission to the United States. This frankly genocidal strategy closely mirrors that of the US and Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” and the weaponization of starvation and aid for colonial and imperialist ends. In both Cuba and Gaza, this is a deliberate strategy by the US to make people suffer from its actions, then place blame on the governing authority to justify regime change.
In November of last year, the US first announced an aid package to Cuba in response to Hurricane Melissa. While the hurricane hit the east of the island with force, Cuba did not suffer mass casualties and crisis because of the people-first policies of the Cuban government, which continues to distribute resources and prevent casualties from natural disasters, despite US suffocation.
Hurricane Melissa killed over 54 people in Jamaica, at least 43 people in Haiti, four in the Dominican Republic, yet only one person in Cuba. The success of the Cuban government’s response is not only totally ignored by the US organizations, but also used to justify operations and propaganda. For instance, the Archdiocese of Miami said about its aid distribution: “Dozens were killed, mostly in Jamaica and Haiti, but Cuba’s weakening economic situation prompted action from a small group of donors.” Surely, when a country’s response to a natural disaster is to successfully evacuate 735,000 people, prevent a major death toll, and prioritize people’s survival, it is worthy of praise. Of course, this would be in total opposition to the US propaganda line that Cuba is a “failed state.”
In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2005, Cuba offered a medical brigade of 1,586 doctors and 37 tons of medical supplies. The US refused outright. The hurricane and lack of response led to the deaths of over 1,800 people, many due to a lack of medical assistance and supplies, some of which Cuba could have provided, and 1.5 million people were displaced—many have never returned. The US government was happy to let people die rather than to accept the unconditional help of a Cuban medical brigade, which underscores its willingness to sacrifice its own population to pursue its aggression against Cuba. The stark difference between the US and Cuba in responding to natural disasters is at its core the polarity between a war economy based on extraction and profit, and a peace economy based on solidarity and common well-being.
Siege on Cuba, Siege on Gaza
The same genocidal motivations for the US-Israeli siege on Gaza have been imposed to isolate and suffocate Cuba. The US has banned the entry of goods into Cuba, imposed a total blockade on oil, and increased sanctions, which cause billions of dollars in losses each year, which is impoverishing the country. While it suffocates the infrastructure of even and efficient food distribution in Cuba, the US aid is being given only to the Catholic Church and US-backed NGOs, specifically to bypass distribution through the state. This is eerily consistent with the US and Israel’s horrific and deadly “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).” In Gaza, they laid a total barbaric siege on Gaza, refused the entry of any goods and aid, and banned international aid groups in order to justify US mercenaries providing meager amounts of aid between firing bullets. The US and Israel massacred at least 2,603 people and wounded 19,034 more at GHF distribution points. There was absolutely no accountability for or action against these barbaric killing fields.
In both Palestine and Cuba, the US is overtly and brazenly violating the humanitarian principle of working with governments in affected countries. It is using the same propaganda lines to do so. For Cuba, the US says it is “bypassing regime interference, and ensuring transparency and accountability” and that the aid is “part of a broader effort to stand with the Cuban people as they seek a better future.” For Gaza, the US says it is “the only viable way to get aid into Gaza without empowering Hamas” and “is a results-focused alternative to a broken aid system.”
In both places, the US openly claims it is undermining governments and organizations that it claims “steal” the aid. This accusation is a confession. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) set on fire, burnt, and buried more than 1,000 trucks of aid in Gaza as Israel manufactured a famine that killed at least 10,000 people, and for which the United Nations described as the “failure of humanity itself.” An IOF reservist said he “accompanied aid convoys supplying a militia in Rafah” and Israeli security added “closed boxes with unknown contents” to justify lies that Hamas was weaponizing aid. Israel also funded and coordinated militia groups in Gaza to loot aid, and protected Israeli settlers looting and destroying aid from trucks. Not to mention the many videos of IOF soldiers gleefully and jeeringly consuming this food aid. All of these actions, with the brazen refusal to allow passage for thousands of aid trucks in Gaza, provided the conditions to justify the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” and its killing fields.
Similarly, it is the United States that is stopping goods from entering Cuba. Since 1962, the US has imposed a blockade that bans all trade and economic activity with Cuba. This is banned outright in the US with severe consequences, and spans the entire world, as the US imposes secondary sanctions, tariffs, and other punitive measures against any country, organization, company, or individual that does not comply with its blockade. In recent weeks and months, this has been tightened further. No oil has entered Cuba since December, and the government has rolled out a plan to ration limited energy for only the most urgent uses, such as hospitals, schools, and food. Cuba can no longer fuel airplanes, which may halt all air travel. The US, on one hand, is threatening tariffs and sanctions on any country that tries to trade oil and goods with Cuba, and on the other, it is pushing propaganda that the country is not able to feed and provide energy for its people. In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.
Made in Israel and Miami
The aid is also political at its source. All supplies through the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” were from Israeli suppliers, directly creating profit for Israeli venture capitalists, tech investors, and other occupation personnel like Michael Eisenberg, Liran Tancman, and Yotam HaCohen. It also funneled public funds into private and shady mercenary companies, UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions. This strategy utilizes aid as a weapon of colonial regime-change efforts, with the US aiming to install its proxies firmly in power in Cuba and Palestine, in opposition to the interests and will of the people.
For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire.
The US aid supplies to Cuba originate in Miami, Florida, long known as the site of the most vocal and brazen pro-US, fascist sentiments in the Cuban diaspora. The aid is being distributed by the Catholic Church and Caritas, a US-funded NGO set up in 1991 during the ‘Special Period’ in Cuba, which has funded regime-change operations on the island. Catholic Relief Services, one of the three organizations in Caritas North America, receives over half of its funding ($1.5 billion) directly from the US government. The other organization involved is the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, which was the architect of the covert CIA “Operation Pedro Pan,” where over 14,000 Cuban children were taken from their homes to the US in the years after the revolution. Also included on the board of the charity is Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, John Couriel. The headline $9 million figure of aid to Cuba is being absorbed by organizations like this. In fact, in 2024, over 72% of all US aid to Cuba went to US organizations. This must pose the urgent question of how much of this aid is a way to direct resources to opposition groups in Cuba under the guise of sending food.
Gathering Intelligence
The strategy of deploying aid also pertains to a significant element of covert surveillance and intelligence. At the end of January last year, the US deployed around 100 mercenaries, mostly former US Special Forces soldiers, to patrol Gaza and set up the deadly “aid hubs.” US soldiers shot and killed starving Palestinians seeking aid while cheering and ordering Domino’s Pizza. These sites were death traps, used to lure Palestinians into an area where they were surveiled and shot at. People risked their lives to receive a meager amount of aid that was often rotten. It has been revealed that a significant element of this operation was surveillance. A UG Solutions contractor revealed that American and Israeli soldier-spies are using facial recognition software “on top of real-time footage of distribution sites” from CCTV and aerial surveillance footage. This was beyond merely a method of massacre, but of surveillance through the proxy of “aid.” The US and Israel confirmed there was surveillance after specifically recruiting intelligence operatives.
Similarly, the State Department announced that US government officials have been “making sure that the regime does not take the assistance, divert it, try to politicize it.” They went on to explain that “we have been watching” and “speaking with everyday Cubans…understanding the challenges they have been facing, both in the wake of the hurricane and due to the broader humanitarian crisis in Cuba.” This is worrying, as it is clear the US is using this as an opportunity, in tandem with NGO networks, to collect intelligence and push pro-US propaganda and lies across the country under the guise of “aid.”
In both Cuba and Palestine, the United States is deploying its barbaric methods of producing mass suffering in order to bring about political and economic submission. The tactics being used in distributing aid in Cuba now are a softer model of the killing fields in Gaza that seek to force the entire population into submission and occupy the entirety of Palestine.
Beyond this playbook, it is important to recognize the historic connections between Palestine and Cuba, particularly as they resist the violence of the US empire that seeks to starve them into submission. Cuba was one of 13 countries to vote against the UN partition of Palestine in 1947; in the months after the triumph of the revolution, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro traveled to Gaza; they were one of the first to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964; they severed all ties with Israel in 1973; and labelled Israel’s action a genocide in 1979. Since 1982, Cuba has been providing education for Palestinian students in Cuba; it helped to get Palestine observer status at the United Nations in 2012; it supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice in 2024; and has been one of Palestine’s staunchest supporters diplomatically and materially.
This historic friendship and solidarity are what the United States fears. This is why it is hellbent on destroying the Cuban Revolution and its continued ability to provide for its people, while refusing to let US companies pillage and extract from the island and its inhabitants. For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire. The situation is urgent and requires action. Like Fidel Castro said to the UN in 1979: “If we do not resolve today’s injustices and inequalities peacefully and wisely, the future will be apocalyptic.”
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Probe Reveals Nearly 3,000 Gaza Aid-Seekers Killed by Israeli Forces
"These repeated attacks are grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Sep 17, 2025
An investigation published this week revealed that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others over 23 months of Israel's US-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
The New Humanitarian's open-source investigation chronologically documents the killing of 2,957 Palestinian aid-seekers and the wounding of 19,866 others.
These figures include nearly 1,000 Palestinians who United Nations human rights officials say have been killed at or near aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israeli soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of civilians at GHF distribution points.
The New Humanitarian noted that these numbers represent approximately 4.6% of the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are likely a vast undercount.
“These are not isolated incidents. They're not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The New Humanitarian.
Haque and other experts interviewed for the investigation called Israeli attacks on Gaza aid-seekers "grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The New Humanitarian's investigation identified "clearly discernible patterns... showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive."
Haque said that "if Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings."
"Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” he added.
The New Humanitarian's investigation comes as Israeli forces ramp up their assault on Gaza City during Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave. Israeli leaders have publicly backed a proposal by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
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'Shameful Assault on Human Rights': Trump Sanctions Palestinian Orgs That Called for UN to Investigate Israeli War Crimes
The former executive director of Human Rights Watch said Trump's "answer to Israeli atrocities is to censor reporting on them rather than to stop them."
Sep 05, 2025
Human rights groups around the world are reacting with horror after the Trump administration sanctioned three leading Palestinian human rights monitors who sought to bring evidence of Israeli war crimes before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The three groups—Al-Haq in the West Bank and the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights—are considered among the leading human rights monitors in the region.
In an announcement on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the sanctions were imposed on these groups because they "directly engaged in efforts by the international criminal court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel's consent."
In November 2023, the three groups petitioned the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials—including President Isaac Herzog and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
They cited Israel's widely documented use of indiscriminate airstrikes against densely populated civilian areas and its near-total blockade of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip—acts that, over the next nearly two years, have made Gaza virtually uninhabitable and brought it to the point of mass starvation.
The ICC would eventually issue warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024, which was met with threats of sanctions by the administration of then-President Joe Biden, who called the warrants "outrageous." Despite Netanyahu and his officials having visited multiple ICC member countries, which are obliged to carry out the court's warrants, no arrests have been made.
Since retaking office, US President Donald Trump has followed through on threats against the ICC, placing sanctions on the court as a body and threatening to sanction anyone who assisted in its prosecution or investigation into Israel or other US allies.
In August, as much of the world had begun to isolate Israel as it moved forward with an explicit ethnic cleansing campaign, the administration also sanctioned four of the ICC's judges, including the one who authorized the warrants against Israel's leaders.
Now, just days after the world's leading group of genocide scholars voted overwhelmingly for a resolution stating that Israel's actions meet the legal definition for the crime, the Trump administration is attempting to cripple the groups that are documenting those actions.
Former BBC radio journalist Sangita Myska noted that "this type of action is normally reserved for terrorists and drug traffickers," adding that it will "severely damage the organizations' ability to advocate for Palestinians."
It is not the first time the Trump administration has sanctioned a Palestinian human rights group. In June, it sanctioned Adameer, a Ramallah-based group focused on the rights of prisoners in Israel's brutal detention system.
At the time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the sanctions "would make day-to-day operations harder and harder, including for their employees, assisted communities, and service suppliers. This will also negatively affect their engagement with their partner organizations, locally and internationally, including US-based groups."
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that the administration was acting "as if the answer to Israeli atrocities is to censor reporting on them rather than to stop them."
In a joint statement issued Thursday, Al Haq, Al Mezan, and the PCHR described it as "a coward[ly], immoral, illegal, and undemocratic act."
"As the world moves to impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel," the groups said, "its ally, the US, is working to destroy Palestinian institutions working tirelessly for accountability for the victims of Israel's mass atrocity crimes."
(Video: Al Jazeera)
"They want to silence Palestinian voices," said PCHR's Basel Al-Sourani in an interview with Al Jazeera. "They want to silence anyone who stands up to Israeli crimes, anyone who tries to advocate for Palestinian rights, anyone who tries to bring perpetrators to justice."
Other human rights groups around the world have joined them in condemning the decision.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, a director at Amnesty International, described the sanctions against these groups as a "shameful assault on human rights and the global pursuit of justice."
"These organizations carry out vital and courageous work, meticulously documenting human rights violations under the most horrifying conditions," Guevara-Rosas continued. "They have steadfastly continued to do so in the face of war, genocide, and the oppressive reality of Israel's apartheid regime, as well as malicious attempts to discredit their findings and cripple their funding with spurious terrorism accusations. They are the voice of Palestinian victims, amplifying stories of human suffering and injustice that would otherwise remain unheard."
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which in July joined the growing international consensus that Israel is perpetrating a genocide, said it stands "in full solidarity with our colleagues and partners working for human rights between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."
The group described the US sanctions as "yet another move aimed at erasing fundamental norms of protecting human beings designed to enable Israel to continue harming Palestinians without restraint."
Al-Sourani said that the sanctions were "not a surprise, given the US administration being a partner in Israel's genocide."
Trump has endorsed Israel's stated goal to permanently displace most Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, with reporting earlier this week detailing plans to replace the destroyed enclave with a sprawling real-estate development.
Some of the developers of the plan are Israelis involved in the administration of the US-Israeli-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), where over a thousand Palestinian aid seekers have been killed, often in deliberate massacres by Israeli troops, in recent months.
Despite the new dangers they will impose, Al-Sourani said, "these sanctions, they will not deter us."
"We will continue documenting the Israeli crimes that are happening on the ground," Al-Sourani said. "We will continue our engagement with the ICC. We will continue advocating for justice, for the rule of law, and for the protection of the ICC judges and the prosecutors."
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