(RNS) — The Rev. Johnnie Moore, the evangelical Christian minister who chairs the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, defended the workings of his deeply contentious food distribution system to a friendly audience in a Zoom appearance Tuesday (July 22), presented by the American Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization.
During the one-hour Zoom call, Moore described the foundation’s work as “unbelievably effective” at getting meals to about 800,000 people in Gaza, or nearly half its population, while working in an active war zone and facing an onslaught of disinformation.
“We work around the clock in order to ensure safety and effectiveness, to be as principled as we possibly can be,” he said. “We are dedicated to the humanitarian principles of humanity and of impartiality, of independence and of neutrality.”
He did not mention in the call that the foundation is a private Israel- and U.S.-backed group, whose distribution sites are guarded by private American contractors and, on the outskirts, by Israeli soldiers who have opened fire daily on people approaching the food aid sites.
Since the GHF began operating in May, 1,054 people have been killed trying to get food; 766 of them in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near United Nations and other humanitarian organizations’ aid convoys, a U.N. human rights office spokesman said Tuesday. The recent bloodshed has led to increasing outrage across the world.
On Monday, 21 European countries plus Canada and Australia issued a joint statement condemning “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food” in Gaza.
“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” the statement said.
Yet Moore, who may be best known for serving on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board during the first Trump administration, said no one has been shot inside the distribution sites. He acknowledged that some were killed near the sites but disputed the figures, saying they were given to the media by Hamas. The numbers come from the Gaza Health Ministry, and Hamas is the elected government in Gaza.
“We do not deny that there have been civilians that have been killed trying to seek aid in the Gaza Strip while we’ve been operating,” Moore said. “By the way, the IDF doesn’t deny that they are responsible for some of that, and Hamas, by the way, does deny that they’re responsible for it. The fact is, Hamas has intentionally harmed Gazans in order to allege that it was the IDF or that it was GHF in order to disincentivize people from coming to our aid distribution site.”
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That question was the toughest asked by Assaf Weiss, vice president of the American Jewish Congress, who posed mostly deferential questions to Moore. Weiss is a former chief of staff for the speaker of the Knesset. The congress is an association of American Jews organized to defend Jewish and Israeli interests and committed to “an improved understanding of Israel,” according to its website. Throughout the Zoom session, there were repeated calls for the return of some 50 Israeli hostages, some alive, some dead, still in Hamas captivity.
The Rev. Johnnie Moore speaks about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation during a Zoom appearance sponsored by the American Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, July 22, 2025. (Video screen grab)
Moore was not asked about the GHF’s funding source, which remains shrouded, though in late June, the Trump administration said it would supply $30 million to GHF operations. The Israeli government has publicly denied paying for it, though it is intimately involved in the operation. A Washington Post story on Monday identified several private U.S. donors, including the Chicago-based private equity firm McNally Capital, which specializes in acquiring aerospace, defense and technology companies.
Moore did not mention the GHF’s own American security contractors, which have used pepper spray on people receiving aid, according to reports in Drop Site News.
The GHF operates four aid distribution sites, three of which are in militarized zones in the far south of Gaza and another in a militarized zone in central Gaza. Moore said he would like to expand to eight distribution sites.
Previously, the U.N. distributed aid through a coordinated delivery system with around 400 locations across Gaza, many controlled by Hamas.
Moore said the GHF was founded to prevent Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and selling the aid, for which Israel blames the U.N.
“GHF was designed from the very beginning to avoid the problem of the mass diversion of aid,” he said. “Unfortunately, our challenge is compounded by the fact that the United Nations, from really the top of the organization, and other NGOs are not getting their own aid where it needs to go.”
Palestinians carry bags filled with food and humanitarian aid provided by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed organization approved by Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
He said he has pleaded and begged the U.N. to help it carry out its mission.
“Just earlier today, about an hour and a half ago, I wrote another letter to the head of OCHA (the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Tom Fletcher, who’s the head humanitarian official in the United Nations,” Moore said. “I wrote to him again and I expressed our alarm that there is all this U.N. aid that is sitting inside the Gaza Strip. There’s U.N. flour there that’s about to expire — the medical supplies that either have expired or are about to expire. Thousands upon thousands of pallets sitting in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel has mostly blocked the work of various U.N. agencies. In January, it banned the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, from operating in the country, alleging some of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that started the war. And on Monday, Israel refused to renew the visa of a senior U.N. official in the OCHA office.
Other humanitarian groups have declined to work with the GHF, saying they have concerns about its model of aid. No faith-based humanitarian group has yet to join forces with the GHF.
“The whole international system declines to work with us because of politics,” Moore said. “Despite everything that they say about being concerned about the needs on the ground, it is politics that is prevailing over the needs of these people.”
He did not deny that starvation is a fact in Gaza. The World Food Program has said the population of Gaza was at the brink of famine.
“The situation is real and the world needs to respond to it,” he said.
Moore concluded, saying: “I’m a Christian, an evangelical Christian. There’s nothing more Christian than feeding people.”
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