Big-name US consulting firm pulls out of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — for shame?

The Boston Consulting Group, one of the world’s leading management companies, has pulled out of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as criticism of its operations and controversy around reported IDF shootings of Palestinians arriving to get food have ballooned in the last three days.

The US-based BCG is one of the ‘Big Three’ in the management consultancy world, alongside McKinsey and Co. and Bain and Co. It had reportedly designed and was managing the implementation of operations at the Foundation — which has, in somewhat murky fashion, both US and Israeli (Mossad) backers.

The Foundation has also seen several top officers quit, just in the last week alone, as several media reports have noted — including this one from the Guardian. Leading the exodus, literally, was the Foundation’s former executive director Jake Wood, a former US Marine who resigned because he could not ensure the GHF’s independence from Israeli interests. That was 26 May.

As for Johnnie Moore, who replaced Wood on 3 June, he is a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom — and an adviser to POTUS Donald Trump on ‘inter-faith issues’.

He has been a strident defender of the GHF since well before he took charge, calling out UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on X with an @, designating him a liar amplifying a Hamas-directed disinformation campaign.

The Guardian noted:

‘A biography on the Kairos website calls Moore a “noted evangelical friend of the State of Israel” and says that he has played an important role in US outreach to Middle Eastern governments, including in the conclusion of the Abraham accords to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states.’

What he does not have, the report pointed out, is any experience with humanitarian aid operations.

Meanwhile, the BCG — which was setting prices and supporting and supplying logistical partners for the Foundation's four distribution hubs has bowed out, leaving the GHF to close down operations Wednesday, 4 June, to allow for clearly unscheduled “update, organization and efficiency improvement work” — just after it announced it was going to try out a women-only lane at the aid centre in Khan Younis, Rafah, for its next distribution day.

Per a Washington Post report citing a spokesperson for the firm, the company has terminated its contract with GHF and placed one of its senior partners, who was leading the project, on leave — pending an internal review.

How non-partisan said review might prove we do not know, but the same report notes an interesting discrepancy of accounts — pun intended. While a BCG spokesperson said its involvement with GHF was pro bono, a source ‘familiar with its operations’ claimed monthly invoices of over $1 million were presented to the Foundation.

Intriguingly, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s X handle is @CallElection — a hint perhaps at a not very neutral political agenda?

It has, in a recent post, stated that among its objectives is not just helping all "innocent" people in Gaza but also saving them from "Hamas and UN groups that harm them" (italics ours).

The UN's harmful act, apparently, is to point out people are dying in the attempt to obtain GHF aid.

The GHF, however, yesterday, 3 June, took credit — via Moore — for delivering more than 7 million meals to Gazans in the last week.

These are numbers for which no independent verification is available, in large part because the aid centre in question is closed to international media (and of course Palestinian media are to be seen as inherently biased, maybe even Hamas).

But back to the GHF, which has said it expects to resume operations on Thursday, 5 May.

The UN has said GHF operations are designed to maintain scarcity and herd people to this danger zone in Rafah, in a highly militarised space — which has been designated as a safe zone in the past, only for people to be bombarded once in the refugee camps here like fish in a barrel — where the IDF army acknowledges shooting anyone who strays off the narrow designated path to get out ahead, because that is a threat to Israel's soldiers.

Israel has had a little crow about how well things are going too.

Curiously, the official government handle repeatedly refers to the GHF as US-led and makes no mention of its own support of the Foundation.

Amongst the contractors BCG was likely facilitating for GHF are the US private security contractors employed to stave off alleged Hamas militants seizing supplies from aid trucks in Gaza. They are guarding not only the aid convoys but the three (out of four) distribution hubs currently operational in southern Gaza.

These distribution centres have been called a "fig leaf" for Israel — and ally United States — to facilitate the displacement of Palestinians by UN aid chief Tom Fletcher in his briefing to the United Nations Security Council earlier.

The UN has also repeatedly denied any militant activity siphoning off aid supplies at scale, which is the whole raison d'être for GHF’s existence — supposedly.

On the other hand, when it comes to the shootings near the aid hubs, the Associated Press reports that the Israeli military has only said it fired warning shots in several instances — and acknowledged having fired directly at a few ‘suspects’ who ignored warnings and approached its forces. It has denied opening fire on civilians; and, for once, has not claimed Hamas fired in the area of the hubs, though it says it is ‘still investigating’.

What we do know is the crowds desperate for food and other essentials are forced to pass close to the areas where Israeli soldiers are stationed.

And the desperation is a known and understandable factor, juxtaposed against Israel’s 5 a.m. curfew and the narrow corridors ‘allowed’ for movement — with the GHF having started aid distribution on 26 May, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade that has pushed Gaza's population of more than 2 million people to the brink of famine.

Add to this that, while there are three distribution hubs — one in central Gaza and two on the outskirts of the now mostly uninhabited city of Rafah — not all of them operate daily.

If people break rank or queue up at 3 a.m., who can blame them?

Apparently, the IDF and Israel’s staunch allies do.

To reach the sites in Rafah, Palestinians must walk for miles along a designated route where the GHF says the Israeli military is in charge of security rather than its own US-based contractor. In statements to the public, the GHF has warned people to stay on the road, since leaving it “represents a great danger”.

That danger, in this case, is surely not Hamas.

Distribution usually starts at 5 a.m. each day. But thousands of Palestinians start walking hours earlier, desperate not to miss out on food. That means large crowds passing by Israeli troops in the dark.

When GHF paused aid distribution on Wednesday, it did say that it was discussing with the IDF measures to improve civilian safety, including changes to traffic management and troop training in this militarised zone (which by definition is barred to media).

Heaviest fire near army base

While shootings have been reported near all three hubs, the heaviest occurred Sunday (1 June) and Tuesday (3 June) at the Flag Roundabout. The traffic circle is located on the designated route about a kilometre northwest of the distribution hub in the Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah — a few hundred metres from an Israeli army base.

Witnesses said that in the early hours Sunday, as crowds made their way down the coastal road toward the hub, Israeli troops fired warning shots and made announcements through drones flying overhead, telling them to turn back and return when the hub opened at 5 a.m.

By 3 a.m., however, thousands were massed at the Flag Roundabout. That was when Israeli troops started firing, with guns, tanks and drones, three Palestinian witnesses said. They said they saw people falling dead or wounded as the crowd scattered for cover.

Mohammed Ahmed, one man in the crowd, said he saw no provocative acts before the shooting. He said troops “may have opened fire because they felt threatened by the thousands of people in the area”.

Witnesses gave similar accounts of Tuesday's shooting, around 4 a.m., at the same roundabout.

Israel says it only fires warning shots to control crowds

The Israeli military said it fired warning shots on Sunday at “several suspects” approaching them. On Tuesday, it said it “fired to drive away suspects”. In a statement, army spokesman Effie Defrin said “the numbers of casualties published by Hamas were exaggerated” but the incident was being investigated.

He also again accused Hamas of "trying to disrupt the arrival of aid" to Palestinians and pointed to drone footage that the military says shows armed men firing at civilians trying to collect aid in the nearby city of Khan Younis, where there are no GHF sites.

AP reported that it could not independently verify the video, where it was not clear who was being targeted. In its statements, the IDF does not mention any armed Palestinians.

The GHF, meanwhile, claims there has been no violence in or around its distribution centres.

On Tuesday, GHF acknowledged that the IDF was investigating — but that the probe was into whether civilians were wounded “after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone” in an area “well beyond our secure distribution site”.

A spokesperson added that the GHF was “saddened to learn that a number of civilians were injured and killed after moving beyond the designated safe corridor”.

Spate of casualties overwhelm hospitals

Officials at the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah and at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, meanwhile, report being overwhelmed by casualties — including women and children brought in from areas close to the distribution sites. They said most were suffering from gunshot wounds.

An aid worker at one hospital said the morgue was overflowing and that the wounded filled every bed, with more on the floor. Many had gunshot wounds to the buttocks and legs. The worker had spoken to AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

Aid workers in Gaza say there is still a lot of uncertainty about what is happening and why so many people are being shot, injured and killed. The aid workers are unable to operate closer to the sites because they are military zones.

Humanitarian groups, meanwhile, have warned for weeks that having people collect aid in areas with a military presence would expose them to violence.

“This was a ludicrous and ineffective distribution mechanism that was going to end up deadly, which is, tragically, exactly what we are seeing,” said Arwa Damon, founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (INARA) — and a former senior journalist with CNN.

How UN-run humanitarian aid operations differ

The UN-run and allied systems operate differently, in that workers take aid to Palestinians wherever they are, rather than inviting them to cross hostile territory with no shelter nearby.

“It is appalling that the humanitarian sector that knows how to do their job is being prevented from doing it because of the false narrative that Hamas controls the aid,” Damon said.

Deadly encounters around aid distribution aren't entirely new. In February 2024, Israeli troops guarding an aid convoy heading to northern Gaza opened fire as a crowd of desperate Palestinians stripped supplies off the trucks. More than 100 people were killed, according to Gaza's health ministry, which is led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government.

After investigating that incident, Israel said its troops fired on a “number of suspects” who ignored warning shots and advanced toward its forces. It said a stampede around the trucks caused “significant harm to civilians.” EU and UN officials at the time said most of the casualties were from Israeli fire.

A race for food boxes

Palestinians have described a frenzied free-for-all to get food once they reach the GHF's distribution sites.

Boxes of food are left piled up on pallets in an area surrounded by fences and earth berms. Once the sites' gates are opened, the crowds rush in with everyone grabbing what they can. Witnesses say some people take multiple boxes, which quickly run out, and many must then leave empty-handed.

The GHF issued a video from the Tel al-Sultan hub showing Palestinians racing pell-mell toward the boxes.

Aid workers say the supplies are far from enough, though the GHF says each box contains enough food for a family of five to eat for 3–4 days. Most boxes contain flour, sugar, cooking oil, pasta and tuna cans, among other items.

“Our team on the ground reports these boxes are woefully insufficient for ensuring children's well-being,” said Tess Ingram of UNICEF. “It doesn't have to be this way.”

With AP inputs