BACKED by both the US and Israel, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was introduced by the Trump administration as a ‘humanitarian’ mechanism for food distribution.
In reality, it functions as a militarised tool of control over a starving population.
Since its deployment, Israeli forces have killed at least 1,239 Palestinians attempting to access food, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 40 were killed in a single day.
These massacres occurred predominantly around GHF distribution points, which are positioned in remote zones under heavy military surveillance. Famine conditions in Gaza are now undeniable.
Since Israel imposed a total blockade on 2nd March, mass hunger has deepened. By late May, the GHF had effectively replaced the United Nations in distributing aid, doing so through a network shaped not by humanitarian principles, but by public relations firms, intelligence contractors, and military agendas.
Instead of relief, Palestinians have found death at the edge of empty food crates. GHF’s messaging, however, insists otherwise.
On 29th July, the organisation posted on X: ‘A common misconception about GHF is that we were established to replace the UN and traditional aid organisations. That is not the case.’
Yet on 9th July, GHF claimed that Hamas ‘wants GHF out of Gaza and the UN back in so it can once again control the food supply’.
The contradiction is clear: The GHF was created to displace the UN, and continues to do so under the guise of ‘partnership’.
A coordinated campaign has sought to delegitimise the existing UN aid network. From the outset of the war, political operatives and crisis PR strategists worked to reframe UN agencies as corrupt and ineffective.
In their place, they promoted the GHF, a fully militarised delivery model aligned with Israeli policy goals, as the only ‘safe’ alternative.
These influence efforts were not limited to messaging. They operated alongside military policy to isolate, replace, and ultimately criminalise the previous humanitarian infrastructure.
On 22nd July, GHF Director Johnnie Moore, a Trump-aligned evangelical PR executive, wrote to the UN: ‘The humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate.’
He blamed the closure of 400 UN aid points – shut down by Israel – and claimed aid was expiring in trucks left idle.
That same day, right-wing site Breitbart released a video showing GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay accusing the UN of allowing food to spoil.
The UN, he claimed, had ‘an interest in GHF failing’.
The story alleged UN drivers worked with Hamas and called for the UN to ‘work with GHF, instead of against it’.
Hours later, Israeli army spokesperson lieutenant colonel Nadav Shoshan published an aerial video claiming ‘950 trucks worth of aid’ were waiting in Gaza for international bodies to collect.
This video was rapidly circulated by US and Israeli officials, including Ambassador Mike Huckabee and lobby group AIPAC.
All promoted identical talking points: the UN had failed, aid was rotting, and GHF was the only viable actor. This was propaganda.
The message was pushed in lockstep across Israeli-aligned media: The Jerusalem Post denied a famine existed, but warned one might develop ‘if the UN keeps holding back 950 trucks’.
Fox News cited ‘abandoned aid’ while The Forward repeated the GHF narrative that starvation was real, but UN and Hamas were to blame.
On social media, pro-Israel influencers echoed identical phrases: ‘Inspected and approved by Israel’, ‘UN refuses to distribute’, ‘rotting in the sun’. Meanwhile, the facts remain stark.
On 20 July, Israeli forces killed 81 people gathered at a UN convoy. No apology followed. Israel had already barred the UN from operating freely since March and imposed bureaucratic barriers on aid convoys.
Despite this, senior Israeli officers later admitted there was no evidence Hamas systematically stole aid.
A US government analysis reached the same conclusion.
The GHF’s creation and media campaign was orchestrated by Orbis Operations, a private intelligence firm that designed the initiative with Israeli collaboration in January 2024.
By November, implementation passed to a spin-off firm, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), sealing a closed circuit in which the same contractors who designed the operation were hired to run it.
SRS’s leadership includes former CIA officer Philip Reilly and Jenn Counter, a former Air Force strategist and Orbis vice president.
Counter plays a central role in the operation. Her online writings describe humanitarian crises as opportunities for US intelligence gathering and influence projection.
In one 2021 article titled Rules of Offensive Influence, she outlined a strategy to dominate adversaries by shaping public perception, co-opting community groups, and sowing disinformation.
She advocates exploiting historical trauma, using emotional triggers, and flooding media with layered, repeated messaging to mislead and exhaust opposition.
In her words: ‘The goal is not to counter your adversary. Your goal is to dominate your adversary.’
This influence framework has been applied across GHF’s operation. Social media posts, aerial footage, talking points, and press releases have been tightly scripted.
Messaging is rotated across voices – from IDF officers to Christian pastors to alleged local partners.
All echo the same themes: The UN has failed, Hamas lies, and GHF brings hope. Any challenge to this line is branded as disinformation.
One of the key figures deployed to advance this propaganda was Chapin Fay, a Republican strategist with no humanitarian experience.
On 16 July, after 21 Palestinians were killed at a GHF aid site, Fay appeared on video accusing Hamas of ‘calculated provocation’.
He denied that tear gas had been used and claimed only warning shots were fired.
Days later, wearing body armour and flanked by Palestinian children, Fay promoted a GHF site in Khan Younis.
That same week, the GHF promoted a ‘Women’s Only’ aid day, where two women were shot dead by Israeli forces.
Fay previously worked on Republican campaigns and has run a PR consultancy since 2020.
He described himself on LinkedIn as a ‘warrior poet’ and has no background in relief work.
His video appearances blend Tel Aviv studio monologues with staged on-the-ground segments, all reinforcing the GHF’s core message that: Israel is saving Gaza from itself, and the UN cannot be trusted.
At the centre of this manufactured narrative is Jenn Counter.
In addition to her role at SRS, she serves as a faculty member at Columbia University, where she teaches strategic communications.
On 22nd July, Columbia expelled or suspended more than 70 students for peacefully protesting the genocide in Gaza.
Many of those students have faced harassment, blacklisting, and false allegations of antisemitism. Counter, by contrast, remains employed.
Asked whether the university scrutinises part-time faculty in the same way it disciplines students, a spokesperson replied: ‘It’s pretty common for our part-time employees to have other jobs.’
As over 60,000 people lie dead in Gaza, a number widely believed to be a severe undercount, Israel’s war on truth continues.
Behind the images of smiling spokespersons and ‘aid drops’ lie the bodies of civilians, killed not only by bombs and bullets, but by blockade, starvation, and lies.
Those who warned of genocide were punished. Those who designed it teach communications at Ivy League universities.