In recent weeks, the Trump administration and Israel’s government have opted to partner with the Delaware-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), founded in February 2025, to distribute aid to a population that borders on the brink of starvation. It’s a move that has been described as “using food as a weapon,” according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) director of philanthropy Hani Almadhoun.
The new organization has existed for a handful of months, and has “been responsible for killing more than 600 Palestinians,” Almadhoun, whose brother is chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Friday.
“These are not just statistics. We have family and friends in California whose siblings have been killed at those sites,” he continued. “This is not somewhere – we’re not removed from this. This is the case where Israeli soldiers, some of them are dual citizens, and American, let’s just say, mercenaries who are hired with big pay and brought into Gaza to shoot the people who are being starved. This is not the way to do it.”
Established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly, UNRWA initially supported both Israeli and Palestinian refugees in the region. Israel’s government took over responsibility for its citizens in 1952. The organization employs over 30,000 people and provides pathways toward education, employment and social services, as well as direct relief to the Palestinian people.
Operating GHF is also “expensive,” Almadhoun added, as they spend more than half of their budget on armored vehicles — a luxury not afforded to aid organizations who have been in the region for years, if not decades.
“Guess who doesn’t have armored vehicles? UNRWA does not. Any UN agency. Even outside the UN, there’s many great American NGOs that work in Gaza. They have distanced themselves from this charade, this PR campaign that murders and hurts Palestinians,” he said.
The organization is “solving a problem that shouldn’t exist,” Hayes replied.
Almadhoun agreed: “The issue that they’re using food as a weapon. Do you want to create as much pain as possible in Gaza? Because if a Palestinian receives their food aid from a UN agency or any other agency, they’re not going to feel disrupted [in] their lives as much. So this is the idea is to use it as a pressure point, a negotiation tactic.”
At the beginning of the pair’s exchange, Almadhoun also said there are at least 1,000 UNRWA trucks waiting to enter Gaza. The organization has operated in Gaza and Israel since it began supporting refugees in the region.
Unfortunately, he noted, those trucks have not been allowed to enter.
There are other key differences between UNRWA and GFH, Almadhoun explained. The former has 400 distribution sites in the region, which allows the opportunity to distribute far more aid to more people. In contrast, GFH has four — and the Trump administration’s preferred agency also carries guns, something that those who work for UNRWA do not do.
Those guns have resulted in scenes and deaths that Hayes described as “obscene and depraved.” On July 3, two U.S. contractors told the Associated Press that their colleagues who are guarding those distribution sites are “using live ammunition and stun grenades as hungry Palestinians scramble for food.” The AP examined first-person accounts and video to support the claim.
The contractors added that the GHF staff is “often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished.”
These reports support the UNRWA’s own June 27 note that “mass casualties continue being reported among people attempting to access food in the Gaza Strip, including as they approach or gather at militarized distribution points in Rafah and Deir al-Balah or wait for trucks carrying aid supplies. According to OCHA, as of 25 June, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported that 549 people were killed and at least 4,066 injured trying to access food supplies.”
Jonathan Whittall, head of OCHA OPT, also said, “The attempt to survive is being met with a death sentence” and that “the majority of the casualties have been shot or shelled trying to reach U.S.-Israeli distribution sites purposefully set up in militarized zones.”
He further accused Israeli forces of “opening fire on crowds gathering to get food.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government promised $30 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in June.
Watch the interview with Chris Hayes and Hani Almadhoun in the video above.
