Whistleblower: UN Blocking Gaza Aid, Not IDF

An international aid worker submitted a complaint to the USAID Inspector-General alleging that the UN and other programs were refusing any form of IDF help in feeding Gazans.

An international aid worker submitted a whistleblower complaint to the USAID Inspector-General alleging that the UN, WFP, and associated international aid programs were effectively obstructing aid by refusing to work with the IDF despite repeated appeals, according to a report today (Friday) by Fox News.

The whistleblower provided a "firsthand eyewitnessing of senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials offering any support necessary, including security protection and coordination, to representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) only to have WFP and OCHA respond that they were not prepared to discuss such coordination."

Exclusive: Whistleblower alleges misconduct by United Nations in Gaza.

EXCLUSIVE - An international aid worker operating in Gaza has filed a formal whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), alleging "gross misconduct and misuse of humanitarian funds by the World Food Programme and other U.N. Agencies," according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Fox News Digital.

Details of alleged United Nations interference in the delivery of aid to Gazans have been revealed by the whistleblower who was in Gaza in July. The whistleblower confirmed to Fox News Digital the content of the complaint.

The whistleblower’s complaint claims "A firsthand eyewitnessing of senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials offering any support necessary, including security protection and coordination, to representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) only to have WFP and OCHA respond that they were not prepared to discuss such coordination."

According to the whistleblower complaint, this "raises serious questions as to why WFP and OCHA were unprepared to discuss or accept the assistance offered by the IDF, thereby preventing aid from getting to the people of Gaza."

The whistleblower confirmed to Fox News Digital during an interview the allegations outlined in the complaint. The whistleblower said in the complaint that "the IDF is actively helping the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) get food into the hands of civilians while U.N. agencies, including WFP and OCHA, through their unwillingness to coordinate with the IDF, are inhibiting the distribution of such aid."

The whistleblower continued, "As has been recently shown through openly available imagery, the IDF has provided clearance for thousands of tons of U.N. humanitarian goods that are now sitting inside of Gaza, awaiting distribution. The U.N. must be held accountable to pick up and distribute such aid. I urge you to launch an independent investigation into this matter to determine the extent to which U.N. agencies, by refusing to coordinate with the IDF on essential issues, including security, are abusing U.S. taxpayer funds rather than using them to deliver the aid the American people are donating – and whether such actions are being taken independently by U.N. officials in Gaza or at the direction of the U.N. Secretary General or other senior U.N. officials in New York. "

The GHF, with support from the U.S. and Israel, has distributed 127 million meals to Gazans since May. However, its aid distribution system has been under consistent attack from Hamas and from some unlikely quarters — the world's leading aid groups.

The whistleblower told Fox News Digital "There is a concerted effort to discredit GHF and any attempts to provide aid out of [the] U.N."

A senior U.S. State Department official sent Fox News Digital a lengthy response. The official said, "The fact of the matter remains that GHF is a threat to how Hamas functions and enriches itself because GHF provides meals to those in need with safeguards to minimize Hamas from stealing. This is why Hamas continues to attack GHF aid sites."

GHF Executive Chair, Reverend Johnnie Moore, told Fox News Sunday that the U.N. would rather aid Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, than help the charity.

According to the State Department official, "Aid diversion to terrorists frequently occurs in conflict zones under Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) control. It is a moral and legal obligation, and our duty to the American taxpayer, to work with our partners to ensure this ends immediately. There is endless video evidence of Hamas looting, not to mention members of the aid-industrial complex who have admitted that looting exists by reporting it as 'self-distribution,' in a poor attempt at an aid corruption coverup."

The State Department official continued that "During the Biden Administration, USAID OIG published concerns related to the vetting of NGO personnel in Gaza. USAID OIG identified serious shortcomings and vulnerabilities in oversight mechanisms to prevent diversion of aid to Hamas terrorists. As a result of investigations, numerous UNRWA personnel affiliated with Hamas have been referred to the State Department for suspension or debarment proceedings."

Fox News Digital reported on August 1 that the U.S. State Department urged in a report that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that provides aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip needs to be abolished and is beyond reform.

According to a U.S. State Department public assessment to Congress that was independently obtained by Fox News Digital, "The Administration has determined UNRWA is irredeemably compromised and now seeks its full dismantlement."

DOSSIER REVEALS INFORMATION USED TO EXPLAIN UN AGENCY'S DEEP TIES TO HAMAS IN GAZA

Hamas UNRWA.
Photos released by the Israeli Defense Force show three individuals that the Israeli military claims are Hamas terrorists inside a UNRWA compound in Rafah. (IDF)

The State Department officials said that "USAID OIG investigations into UNRWA officials associated with Hamas, as well as other credible reports of Hamas interference in the delivery of aid, are active and ongoing.  USAID OIG has received and is actively investigating credible allegations of systematic interference by Hamas in Gaza. These allegations can come from aid workers, whistleblowers, and other parties, rather than sanitized disclosures sent by U.N. agencies which refuse to name Hamas as the party responsible for the interference. Whistleblowers, including U.N. staff, may fear political retaliation or violent retribution for sharing information and outing Hamas."

An Israeli security official told Fox News Digital, "In recent months, Israeli security officials have several times proposed to U.N. representatives that they hire the services of a security company. However, the U.N. has categorically refused and opposed the Israeli proposal."

The Israeli official added, "It should be emphasized that despite this opposition by the U.N. to armed security for the organizations’ convoys in the Gaza Strip, the U.N. does agree to receive security and escort for its convoys in other countries around the world where it provides humanitarian services to civilians, such as South Sudan or Congo."

The whistleblower’s complaint has caught the attention of congressional lawmakers. A senior Republican congressional staffer confirmed to Fox News that several offices have seen the whistleblower report and that it has been discussed between the Hill and USAID oversight and State Department officials.

"This report is just the latest in a long line of investigations and evidence in showing that Hamas worked with the U.N., NGO and officials within the Biden USAID to divert aid and cover it up. However, it is one of the more compelling accounts to come out yet," said the senior congressional Republican staffer.

A second congressional staffer weighed in on the whistleblower’s complaint. According to the senate aide, the complaint was received, and they "conveyed their interest in this issue to the executive branch. We hope that they will do their job and look at it."
[...]
According to the whistleblower, who was on the ground in Gaza, they "found no evidence of ‘starvation’ or ‘famine’ in Gaza. There are pockets of severe hunger, but they are not systematic or pervasive."

The whistleblower also based the analysis of hunger on input from other aid workers in Gaza.

ISRAEL RELEASES CONVERSATIONS OF GAZA RESIDENTS AMID CRITICISMS OF AID DELIVERY SYSTEM
[...]
Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former White House and National Security Council official during both Trump administrations, told Fox News Digital, "The U.N. is playing hunger games with the people of Gaza to drive a crisis, try to get the GHF to fail and resuscitate UNRWA as the dominant aid facilitator. We are talking about an enormous amount of taxpayer money being provided to WFP and the U.N. writ large with an expectation that aid be delivered in coordination with Israel.

"The allegations here suggest a directive from the Secretary General himself across the U.N. system to cause aid disruptions for the benefit of Hamas, which would be the biggest U.N. scandal since oil for food."

He added, "Secretary Rubio would be more than justified in calling the Secretary General and telling him that the U.N. won’t get another dime from U.S. taxpayers unless he submits to an independent investigation and orders all agencies to cooperate with Israel."
Fox News' Beth Bailey contributed to this article.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/exclusive-whistleblower-alleges-misconduct-united-nations-gaza

npr.org-——Photos of a starving baby in Gaza shocked the world Israel supporters believe the image shows how international media are “falsifying reporting” about mass starvation in Gaza.

Updated August 7, 2025, Heard on All Things Considered, By Anas Baba, Emily Feng, 4-Minute Listen Transcript

Mother Hidayat Al-Motawaq holds her 18-month-old son, Mohammad Al-Motawaq, in their tent in the Gaza Strip on August 3, 2025. Mohammad is wearing only a diaper, and his ribs are sticking out. His limbs are unusually thin for a child of his age.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — You likely have seen the images: an emaciated Palestinian baby boy, lying limp in his mother’s arms.

The pictures are of 18-month-old Mohammad Al-Motawaq and his widowed mother, Hidayat Al-Motawaq, in Gaza City. Mohammad is a year and a half old and nearly all bone. His eyes protrude, as does his swollen stomach. His spine is so sharp and so defined, it seems it might poke through his thin skin. His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza The images are among those published by major media organizations, including NPR, that depict the extreme hunger that has gripped most of Gaza.

NPR first met the family and photographed the family members in late July, in their tent by the Mediterranean Sea in north Gaza, where they had been displaced.

Since then, the images of Mohammad have been widely circulated within Israel and around the world for a very different reason: Israel’s supporters believe the images show how international media are "falsifying" reporting about mass starvation in Gaza.

The Oppression of Women in Israel

Norman Epstein, June 21, 2016
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-oppression-of-women-in-israel
by Norman Epstein

Discussed in this essay: The War on Women in Israel: A Story of Religious Radicalism and the Women Fighting for Freedom, by Elana Maryles Sztokman. 2014, Sourcebooks, Inc., 352 pages.

AT THE HEAD of the gigantic Charlie Hebdo march in Paris in mid-January stood German Chancellor Angela Merkel, surrounded by several male heads of state (including Benjamin Netanyahu). But readers of the HaMevaser, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox newspaper in Israel, were prevented from seeing Merkel or even knowing that she was there, as the paper’s editors digitally removed her from the photo. This act of erasing women, not only from photographs but from all aspects of public life, is typical of the increasingly powerful religious fundamentalists, or haredim, in Israel.

Their power originates in a decision made after the first election in the newly created State of Israel, in early 1949. David Ben Gurion’s Labor Party (Mapai), which won a large plurality but not a majority of Knesset seats, gained the support of the few Orthodox Knesset members by granting the Orthodox rabbinate control of important aspects of Israeli life (marriage, divorce, conversion, kashrut), and an exemption military service for men studying in yeshiva. (These young men were also provided with generous monthly financial allowances, which are presently in excess of the average monthly salaries of working Israelis.)

Ben Gurion is quoted as having said, “Any Jewish woman who does not bring into the world at least four healthy children is shirking her duty to the nation, like a soldier who evades military service.” His words, motivated by demographic rather than religious considerations and largely ignored by secular Jews, resonated with the growing religious and especially haredi population: The number of freeloading yeshiva students has grown from 400 in 1949 to more than 37,000 today, and while the Jewish population of Israel has grown ten-fold since 1948, its haredi population has increased almost 100-fold.

They now constitute more than 10 percent of Israel’s population, and the proportion of Knesset seats held by the religious parties (two ultra-Orthodox and one ultra-nationalist) has in recent years varied between 18 and 25 percent. These numbers help account for the increasingly repressive control that male haredim now have, not only over haredi women but over all religious and even-non-religious Jewish women in Israel.

The author of The War on Women in Israel, Elana Maryles Sztokman, is a religious Jewish feminist activist. Formerly the executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance in the U.S.A., she has been living in Israel for more than twenty years.

Her book takes on the task of recounting the many ways in which Israeli Jewish women, particularly but not exclusively those who are religious, are ignored, sidelined, punished, blacklisted, and otherwise subjected to male domination — and the fighting responses of many Israeli Jewish feminists and their organizations, which strive to overcome the subjugation of women and to achieve gender equality in all aspects of Jewish and Israeli life.

WOMEN MUST SIT at the back of the bus, say ultra-Orthodox men, some of whom have screamed at, kicked, and beaten women who refuse to move from the front. Ultra-Orthodox leaders have actually prevailed upon the Egged Bus Company, Israel’s main line, to run some segregated buses through haredi territory. This has been countered by “freedom rides” organized by the National Council of Jewish Women and the Israel Religious Action Center. Eventually, Israel’s courts ruled against bus segregation, but this served only to raise the level of violence against women who refuse haredi orders to move to the back, so the issue has not been resolved.

In areas of Israel populated by religious majorities, Sztokman notes, every attempt is made to eliminate the sight, sound, and presence of women at conferences, conventions, on governing bodies, public stages, TV and radio, even in pictures and on posters. Professor Chani Ma’ayan, an expert on respiratory diseases who works at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, and Naama Holtzer, a nurse, on being jointly awarded a prestigious prize by the Health Ministry, were forced to refrain from appearing onstage to accept the award in person, but instead had to send a man in their place. They were also asked to sit in the back of the hall, far from where the men in the audience would be able to see them. Separate lines and hours for men and women, along with other methods of gender segregation, are enforced for health clinics, hospitals, post offices, libraries, trains, cemeteries, and stores.

Female visitors to the ultra-religious Mea She’arim district of Jerusalem who have not covered all their non-facial skin, even their toes, are familiar with the verbal and even physical abuse they encounter from the male guardians of female “modesty.” Such modesty squads are now present in many parts of Israel, where young girls and grown women who are “improperly” dressed and spat upon and screamed at as “whores,” “sluts” and “shikses.” In some places, women have been prohibited from public dancing and even from working as cashiers in supermarkets.

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