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Green Beret observes distribution of aid in Gaza (updated with BBC video) [1]
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Date: 2025-07-30
On July 30 Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan presented in his blog Informed Comment the transcript of an interview with a former Green Beret in Gaza:
US Green Beret: Israeli “Hunger Games in Gaza” (h/t Sen. Chris Van Hollen)
Anthony Aguilar first explains that in his 25 years of service he served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and a small stint in Kazakhstan. After Aguilar retired he went to Gaza:
I had been familiar with the situation in Gaza. The motto of Special Forces is “De oppresso liber”-— to free the oppressed. I felt that people that are starving, that need food, that are hungry, that are dying—-that sounds like oppression to me, and I wanted to be a part of it. That motto isn’t something that I just set to the side when I got out of the army. It’s something that I live by.
Hired by one of the GHF contractors, Aguilar says he spent days on every one of the four “secure distribution sites” in Gaza that are run by the GHF [“Gaza Humanitarian Foundation“] and the Israeli military.
I spent days on end in an armored vehicle doing the delivery of aid. And the American people need to know what the United States is involved in in Gaza. U.S. tax dollars are going towards this effort.
Aguilar says the American people need to be aware that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation method of aid distribution ... is “inherently dangerous. It lures Palestinians into active war zones throughout Gaza to get food.”
Under the U.N. method, there were 400 sites. Now there are only four. All four of those sites are co-located with Israeli positions in active combat zones. That’s not humanitarian. By design, it is inherently dangerous. By execution, it is failing, and it will not succeed because it’s not run by people that know anything about humanitarian assistance, humanitarian aid, or this type of work.
Senator Van Hollen asks if Aguilar has witnessed Palestinians seeking aid being “subject to fire, being shot by IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] soldiers and others.” Aguilar replies
I have witnessed it on all four locations with my own eyes. I have not only borne witness to it, touched it, felt it, heard it there on the ground right in front of me. I also captured a lot of it on video and on photos. The proof is also witness, which is me. And I know what I saw. What I saw on numerous occasions are the Israeli Defense Forces firing into the crowds of the Palestinians, firing over their head, firing at their feet, firing into the crowd, not just with rifles or machine guns, but tanks, tank rounds, artillery, mortars, missiles, not because they were combatants or because they were hostile or because they were Hamas, but simply as a means to control the crowd.
Aguilar explains those crowds are the result of how aid is being delivered at only four sites.
Compared to 400. More importantly, in Gaza City, in Jabalia, the entire vulnerable population that is on the verge of famine can’t get to any of the aid. Can’t even get to it, and we’re not taking it to them.
Aguilar continues: “So in order to reach each of these sites throughout all of the rest of Gaza, central to south Gaza, there are only four sites, and three of them are all the way in the south,
located right in the middle of the IDF’s [Israeli military’s] Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which is an offensive operation, not security, not defense, but an offensive war that these civilians have to walk through. And they get shot. They get shot at by the IDF, and unfortunately, they get shot at by American contractors on the ground.
Aguilar says: “ One of the photos that I took was of a young boy. On Secure Distribution Site One on the 27th of May, the second day we had done distribution, at this point the second-in-charge of the entire contract resigned in protest based on how distribution went on the 26th of May. On Day One, he notified the leadership: “I can’t be a part of this anymore.”
This young man on this site, as you can see, he doesn’t have a box. He’s carrying things that he found on the ground because on the sites, it became a free-for-all. It became a survival of the fittest. The Gaza Olympics, Hunger Games— There was no box for this young man. So he picked up some things that he found on the ground, and he was so thankful for even that. And he walked up to me and he extended his hand, and I beckoned for him to come forward, and he grabbed my hand, and he kissed my hand and he said, “Shukran, shukran,” and he was sincere. He was crying. He walked eight kilometers to get there. No shoes. Probably hasn’t eaten in days. Then he held my hand and he kissed it, and I knelt down to look at him in the face so I can let him know that, you know, people care. You’re not alone. People care. And he set down his bags and he put his hands on my face and he kissed me.
Aguilar says the young man picked up his bags and went back to join his group. And he left through the exit of Site Number Onewhich goes north to the Morag Corridor— a combat area, a fighting area.
The IDF [Israeli military] opened up with machine gun fire into the crowd to get them to leave faster, to get them to hurry. Shooting at their feet, shooting over their head, shooting into the berm. There’s video of this. It’s been verified... I didn’t know what was going on, and I heard the shooting. So I ran to look, and there were dead Palestinians. He was one of them.
Aguilar emphasizes the young man wasn’t a threat. “The people that we promised that we’re going to bring food to, that we’re going to feed, we’re not providing enough.”
Right now, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has achieved 82 million meals delivered into Gaza. They’ve been doing that for over 60 days of distribution. So at the rate of what the U.N. was doing, they are operating at a performance rate of 3%.
Aguilar says “if the amount of aid that the U.N. was delivering—500 to 600 trucks a day, let’s just say 500 trucks a day is the mark, GHF, UG Solutions, and SRS are delivering 18 trucks a day on average. At just four sites.
And in order to get to it, the people getting to it have to endure gunfire, have to endure an 8 to 12 kilometer walk one way to get there.
Not all the sites are open each day. “So all of these people, if they can’t get aid at Site Four and they want to go down south to get Site One, they are stuck down there. They’re displaced.”
the United States of America is complicit in setting mouse traps with cheese. The food is the bait to bring them down and then displace them from the north.
Aguilar repeats: “It is the displacement strategy.” If we’re supposed to be distributing humanitarian aid, why aren’t we building aid sites where the need is? If everybody’s north, why are we building sites in the south?
How do they get here? Oh, well, they walk. Oh, so they displace from where they live to come here to get food. And do they get to go back? No. So, we’re displacing people.
The United States government, through its $30 million to the State Department to GHF, the American taxpayer, Americans that are on the ground with guns, we are complicit in the displacement of a population of people, innocent, starving people who we tell,
“We’re here to feed you. Come and get some food.” And we use it as bait. And most of them don’t survive.
Aguilar shows the senator a picture of a young girl:
This young girl, happy to be there. Some of us on our—with our own money—purchased cookies for the kids because the boxes just have rice, flour, fava beans, nothing that you can actually eat until you cook it. This girl has a package of cookies. She opened it and was handing it out to other children. These are the Palestinians. These are the people of Gaza. These are—this isn’t Hamas. This could be my daughter
Aguilar emphasizes: “Never at any time on all four distribution sites, at distributions through morning, afternoon, night, throughout the night, during the day, did I ever witness a threat, hostility, even anything close to hostility ever in the whole group.”
Aguilar explains how stun grenades injured him and some of the aid-seekers:
This woman here, this is Site One. She was hit in the head with a piece of shrapnel from a stun grenade that was thrown by a contractor. It hit her in the head and knocked her unconscious. Before she left that site, I was hit also. I got stitches in my arm from it. And the gentleman that held me up off the ground was a Palestinian man.
Aguilar shows a photo of a man covering his face because the stun grenades have tear gas in them. “So when they explode, not only do they fire these pellets, they also dispense tear gas.”
Senator Van Hollen asks who is giving the orders for all the GHF operations. Aguilar replies: “Great question, sir. I was told very explicitly, directly to my face, that our client is the IDF [Israeli military]. Our client is the IDF.”
And this came out in a discussion once where I was in the control room. I was on control room duty that day. I was in there that day with the radio observing Site Number Two distribution. A Palestinian man had picked up some children to let them step on his shoulders to get onto a berm because they were being crushed in the crowd. Site Two is very small, the smallest of all four sites. And these children were being crushed, and he picked them up there and put them up on the berm. And the Israeli Defense Forces liaison officer in the main control center with us comes up to the screen that I’m watching and he says, “Tell your men to get them down.” “Get them down now or I will.”
In conclusion, Anthony Aguilar says
never in 25 years have I witnessed or been a part of what I saw in Gaza, the death, the destruction, the injustice, the use of escalation of force against an unarmed population of civilians. And I hope I never witness something like that again.
“This is not in line with American values, and Americans need to know that.”
UPDATE: A commenter below links to Gaza Aid Shootings, a 6-minute video from the BBC which features the former Green Beret.
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