By Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed – The Grayzone
Top Israeli lawmakers have accused their government of laundering massive sums through a shadowy network of US humanitarian and mercenary orgs. The weaponized aid initiative is the linchpin of Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by forcing the starving population into concentration camp-like hubs.
Israel’s scheme to commandeer aid distribution in Gaza ended in chaos on May 27, with Israeli soldiers reportedly opening fire on stampeding crowds of hungry Palestinians after just 8000 boxes of rations were handed out by an opaque organization calling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Founded this February in Switzerland under a cloud of mystery, GHF serves as an umbrella for a network of private mercenary firms which Israel is using to supplant the role of the United Nations in feeding Palestinians after bringing them to the brink of starvation.
At the moment, the public has no idea who is funding the opaque aid boondoggle. A GHF spokesman told the Washington Post “the foundation has already secured $100 million from an undisclosed donor.”
Right-wing Israeli opposition figure and Member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman proclaimed that GHF’s mysterious financial angel was, in fact, the Israeli government. “The money for humanitarian aid comes from the Mossad and the Ministry of Defense,” Lieberman wrote on Twitter/X, complaining, “Hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of Israeli citizens.”
Yair Lapid, a Member of Knesset and de facto leader of Israel’s loyal opposition, has accused the Israeli government of funding two “shell companies,” pointing to GHF and the private mercenary firm, Safe Reach Solutions, which was founded by former CIA field operative Phillip Reilly. Two former US officials told the Qatari-owned outlet Middle East Eye that Reilly “had won the trust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several Israeli businessmen close to him.”
If true, this would mean Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus is effectively laundering massive sums of money through a weaponized aid scheme that forms the linchpin of its plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza. A leaked internal GHF document acknowledged that the food distribution centers and residential compounds it was constructing in Gaza could be perceived as “‘concentration camps’ with biometrics.’”
The GHF model appears integral to Israel’s stated plan to occupy 75% of the Gaza Strip, forcing starving and homeless Palestinians into what its military has branded as “humanitarian islands” designed to “divide and rule” the decimated enclave. It is also a clear attempt at replacing UNRWA, the United Nations agency that has tended to the needs of Gaza’s refugee population since 1949, and which the Israeli Knesset designated as a terrorist organization in 2024.
GHF’s creation can be traced directly to the Israeli government’s COGAT office, which presides over the siege of Gaza, as well an Israeli entrepreneur named Liran Tancman, who was described in one report as “a reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians.”
With no legal standing or formal mandate to operate in Gaza, GHF now operates at the pleasure of Israel’s occupation army. But with an endorsement from the Trump administration, and with US mercenary muscle maintaining its dystopian distribution centers, the scheme functions behind an American facade.
Just a day before GHF’s planned roll-out in Gaza, the organization’s CEO, Jake Wood, resigned in protest, condemning the group’s failure to uphold “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality.” Next, GHF’s COO, David Burke, fled for the emergency exit. David Kohler, a Swiss board member, has also resigned without explanation.
Following their departure, leadership of the murky outfit passed to John Acree, a former USAID administrator who recently accused the President of giving a “free pass” to Russia in a rambling Facebook post lashing out at the “criminal” Trump for defunding his longtime employer.
Even after the situation at GHF’s militarized aid outpost in western Rafah ended in mayhem on May 27, a network of shady mercenary firms including Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions have continued to offer high-paying positions to potential guns-for-hire.
A job listing for UG Solutions appeals to “snipers” with “prior experience in combat zones,” the “highest level of weapons proficiencies,” and “advanced combat skills” who could “operate effectively in high-threat environments.” Preference would be given to “Special Forces qualified personnel,” as well as “personnel with OSINT/Intelligence Background.”
UG Solutions’ founder, Jameson Govoni, has described himself as a “degenerate from Boston” who “joined the Army as fast as I possibly could to inflict pain on the people who inflicted pain on us.” He also founded a company called “Alcohol Armor” that markets hangover recovery solutions supposedly based on his expertise in getting wasted. “In the military, we’re hands down the worst drinkers in the fucking world. I’ve had my stomach pumped,” Govoni’s business partner, Glenn Devitt, boasted.
Phillip Reilly, the normally publicity hungry former CIA field operative who founded Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) – a partner of GHF and UG Solutions – has not spoken on the record to any media organization to date about his apparently lucrative exploits in Gaza.
SRS first appeared in Gaza this January, when a collection of middle aged mercenaries portrayed in US media as “suburban dads” established a checkpoint along the Netzarim Corridor, an area severing Gaza’s northern and central regions which the Israeli military has used as a base for abusing and massacring civilians.
An SRS document circulated to potential supporters (see below) appealed for “humanitarian partners” to help transform its checkpoint into “an aid distribution point.” Days later, GHF was founded in Geneva, Switzerland.
A GHF document distributed to the media in early May listed an array of corporate heavy hitters and former US officials as board members, and boasted of partnerships with financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. Its board included Raisa Sheynberg, a former Treasury Department official who served on the public policy team of Meta’s original Libra cryptocurrency project, and David Beasley, the former South Carolina governor and ex-head of the World Food Program.
The press release pledged that GHF leaders would put “humanity first” as they “pursue pragmatic approaches to intractable problems.”
Among the most notable figures implicated in the GHF scandal is Nate Mook, the former CEO of World Central Kitchen. Named as a board member of GHF, and listed as a founder of the group on its incorporation forms, Mook is now denying any role in the outfit while ducking from the media.
The hidden Chef Jose Andres connection
On the day of GHF’s calamitous launch in southern Gaza, Spanish celebrity chef, World Central Kitchen founder and ex-State Department “culinary ambassador” Jose Andres slammed the boondoggle, writing on X, “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has left Palestinians without food. The people that created it are selfish.”
Chief among those “selfish” figures would be the former CEO of Andres’ World Central Kitchen, Nate Mook. As shown by Israeli journalist Uri Blau, incorporating documents filed with Swiss authorities list Mook as the founder of GHF. He was also named as a board member of the group on the document GHF distributed to the media about its launch. Since the resignation of GHF’s leadership, however, Mook has denied any formal role in the group while refusing to discuss the issue with journalists.
Andres owes much of his image as a globe-trotting humanitarian hero to a 2022 public relations vehicle packaged as a documentary and humbly entitled, “We Feed People.” The film as directed by Hollywood bigwig Ron Howard and produced by Mook, who worked at the time as the CEO of World Central Kitchen (WCK).
According to his bio at the arms industry-funded McCain Institute, where he currently serves as “Special Advisor on Ukraine,” Mook boasts that he has worked with Andres since 2012, “building WCK from one employee and under $1 million per year to $400 million in global impact in 2022.”
Despite his condemnation of GHF, Andres played an early and important role in the project to subvert Gaza’s humanitarian aid system away from the UN, and into line with Israeli objectives. As The Grayzone reported, Andres oversaw WCK’s effort in 2024 to construct a pier made of the rubble of homes in Gaza, which would have enabled the offloading of aid to kitchens it ran across Gaza in coordination with the Israeli military.
When Spain’s then-Minister for Social Rights, Ione Belarra charged Israel with genocide in Gaza, Andres leapt to the apartheid state’s defense, insisting on Twitter/X that Israel was merely “defending its citizens,” declaring that Belarra did “not deserve to be minister,” and accusing her of “pro-Hamas” sympathies.
All the while, Andres continued to cozy up to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who appointed him as a “culinary ambassador” for the Department of State in Feb. 2023. As recently as Sept. 2024, nearly a year into Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza, Andres was seen partying at a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art alongside Blinken, then National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, and corruption-stained New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Less than six months had passed since the American-supplied Israeli military murdered seven WCK employees in a targeted double-tap strike on their aid convoy on April 1, 2024. Yet Andres is still seeking friendly collaboration with Israeli occupation authorities, expressing his thanks to the COGAT siege administrators as recently as this May 28.
GHF forced out of Switzerland, flees to safer ground in US
This May 29, Swiss officials announced that GHF was violating several laws for foundations registered in that country. The shadowy organization subsequently announced that it is moving its operations to the US, where it is likely to receive less scrutiny from a Trump administration that endorsed its creation.
Though its chaotic launch in Gaza generated international headlines, GHF remains shrouded in mystery, with masked mercenaries manning its operations on the ground, and a cast of corporate lawyers operating behind a series of shell companies whose coffers have filled up with millions of dollars from an unknown source.
Perhaps the only thing that seems certain about the opaque entity is that its presence will deliver more misery to the population of Gaza behind the guise of charity.