When Theology Kills: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the Christian Zionist Agenda
The GHF offers a gospel of charity with one hand while authorizing sniper fire with the other.
When Rev. Dr. Johnnie Moore, a Trump-aligned Christian Zionist, was selected to lead the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the appointment was framed as a mission of mercy. In reality, it was a calculated move reflecting a theology that sanctifies suffering and weaponizes aid to serve empire.
The GHF is a United States and Israeli-backed entity, established in February 2025 under the guise of delivering emergency food, water, and medicine to a population devastated by bombs and blockades—bombs dropped and blockades enforced by the very governments funding the aid. GHF bypasses United Nations infrastructure and funnels resources through fortified "aid hubs" surrounded by biometric scanners, militarized checkpoints, and private American security contractors. Global humanitarian leaders have widely condemned GHF, and its initial executive director, former U.S. Marine Jake Wood, resigned in May, stating that GHF could not meet "humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence."
What appears to be humanitarian relief is a choreographed catastrophe. Since the GHF launch, over 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured while attempting to access aid. One U.S security contractor described the chaos in Zeteo: metal lanes collapsed under pressure as desperate civilians were funneled into kill zones. "What we—these American companies and contract personnel—are doing is directly leading to more pain, suffering, and death for the Palestinians in Gaza," he said. The Israeli military is not-so-secretly embedded in GHF operations. U.S contractors shared radio communications with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units, with snipers and tanks operating within earshot. The contractor added, "I would not be surprised if the aid was delivered at night deliberately, given it would then draw people out, at which point they could be fired on as combatants, even though they weren't."
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous.
Israeli newspaper Haaretzrecently published a military whistleblower report confirming that Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot directly at unarmed Palestinians waiting at designated humanitarian aid sites—the very places GHF celebrates as sites of successful distribution. One IDF soldier told Haaretz: "It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between 1 and 5 people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force—no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars… I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." The parallel testimonies of American contractors and Israeli soldiers expose a coordinated structure of lethal control masquerading as compassion. Aid becomes ambush. Flour becomes bait. Mercy becomes a mechanism of surveillance and control.
Yet Moore, in a Fox News op-ed, paints a different picture: one of flawless logistics and divine providence. While Moore boasts of "Over 7 million meals were delivered… no trucks seized, no aid diverted, no violence at distribution sites," Palestinians were being trampled in fenced lanes and shot while reaching for flour, tea bags, and lentils, all requiring water that Palestinians do not have. While he cites spontaneous gratitude from the Gazans, his account includes no mention of the casualties, the gunfire, the biometric surveillance, or the private contractors earning up to $1,000 per day to "protect" food distribution, despite having no training in humanitarian law or weapons discipline.
This narrative, where Christian Zionist leaders claim victory while erasing the suffering caused by their own policies, is part of a carefully crafted theological strategy. My seminary thesis, Bad Theology as a Social Determinant of Health, argues that theologies built on white supremacy—like Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism—transform faith into a political force that legitimizes structural violence by driving policy; justifying oppression; and becoming a cause of disease, displacement, and death. In this worldview, the modern state of Israel is a divine actor in prophecy, Palestinians are obstacles to redemption, and every military escalation is recast as sacred inevitability. So when global outrage over mass starvation in Gaza grew too loud to ignore, the GHF emerged—not as a bridge to recovery, but as a theater of benevolence. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made the logic plain when he said that aid was allowed only as a prerequisite for "international legitimacy to conduct this war." In other words, humanitarianism becomes camouflage, and aid is required to sustain the optics of righteousness while the siege continues.
The brazenness of this theological complicity has only been intensified. Even before Israel's bombing campaign against Iran began, Christian Zionist leaders were at the forefront of urging escalation, framing regional war as a necessary prelude to prophetic fulfillment. Once the Iran-Israel war began, they did not grieve the violence—they celebrated it. Mike Huckabee, a longtime evangelical ally of President Donald Trump and now the U.S. ambassador to Israel, proclaimed on social media that Trump was spared from assassination to fulfill God's plan in the region. In this worldview, every missile launched and every city bombed becomes a step in a divine script. Christian Zionist leaders are not bystanders to this destruction but are its interpreters and enablers.
Christian Zionism does not just erase Palestinian life. It instrumentalizes Jewish death. It claims to defend Israel while advancing a theology in which the majority of Jews are expected to die in a coming apocalypse. As Stephen Sizer documents in Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?, evangelical writers describe the Rapture as "the time of Israel's greatest bloodbath" and "a holocaust in which at least 750 million people will perish." This is not solidarity—it is eschatological antisemitism, cloaked in prophecy and wrapped in the American flag.
These beliefs have long shaped U.S. policy. Sizer notes that during the Reagan administration, figures such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were invited to the White House to interpret events in the Middle East through the lens of the Book of Revelation. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reportedly called Falwell before President Ronald Reagan to brief him on the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, Falwell falsely insisted, "The Israelis were not involved." When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in 1998, his first stop was not a meeting with President Bill Clinton—it was with Jerry Falwell. This is why the resume of Johnnie Moore is no surprise: former spokesman for Falwell's Liberty University, participant in Trump's evangelical advisory board, and a carbon copy of Huckabee, known for his infamous quote, "There's really no such thing as a Palestinian."
The GHF is not a bridge to recovery, but a theological rehearsal, a performance of control and consecrated theater. It asks us to witness a catastrophe and call it the fulfillment of prophecy. To baptize privatized militarism and call it salvation. To offer a gospel of charity with one hand while authorizing sniper fire with the other.
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous. Its leaders speak the language of salvation while sanctioning policies that produce siege, displacement, and death. Johnnie Moore and others like him do not save lives—they provide spiritual cover for systems that end them. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not a deviation from this logic; it embodies it.
As theologian Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac reminds us, Christ is under the rubble—and the church put him there. Will Christians continue to preach biblical literalism that demands a body count? Will Christians let prophecy justify annihilation? The one Christians claim to follow—a Palestinian Jew—was crucified by empire. Yet, Christian Zionism is insistent on crucifying Palestinians and Jews again and again.
