C-Archief

Who Is to Blame for the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza? Debating the Biden Administration’s Record Yechiel (Michael) Leiter; Andy Hall October 20, 2025

In Defense of Israel Yechiel (Michael) Leiter In “How to Stop a Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza” (August 14, 2025), Jacob J. Lew and David Satterfield set out to highlight problems that have bedeviled humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza. But they misdiagnose those problems’ root causes, and they are wrong to inculpate Israel for them.

From the very outset of its war against Hamas, the Israeli government set a clear policy: Gaza must not be allowed to reach a state of famine. Israel has implemented this policy continuously and assiduously. As a result, between October 2023 and September 2025, Israel facilitated the transfer of well over two million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including more than 1.6 million tons of food. This far exceeded the 2,100 kilocalories per capita per day that the Sphere Handbook, the leading standards-setting guide in such contexts, considers the minimum standard for war zones. Israel’s policy has been grounded in its legal obligations, its sense of moral duty, and its independent view of Israel’s interests.

As the Israeli government told the Supreme Court in April 2024, “The political echelon sees great importance in making a constant and vigorous effort to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, as an integral part of the commitment to achieving the war’s aims. From the beginning of the war in Gaza, Israel’s Ministerial Committee for National Security Affairs and its war cabinet have held dozens of meetings, and on many occasions the importance of this policy was emphasized. The clear directives of the political echelon and the actions of state agencies on the ground indicate that Israel does not intend to cause famine” in Gaza.

Lew and Satterfield point an accusatory finger at the 11 weeks this spring during which aid deliveries were suspended, calling it the “pivotal decision” that launched a “new and unparalleled humanitarian crisis.” This downplays the significance of the large quantity of food that entered Gaza during the cease-fire that preceded this period. The flood of aid that entered Gaza during the six-week cease-fire that began in January—on average, 4,200 trucks per week—would well exceed the amount required to meet civilians’ needs during the subsequent cease-fire suspension.

Israel’s Gaza policy was grounded in its sense of moral duty. The U.S. government strictly prohibits aid funded by American taxpayers from reaching terrorist organizations. Lew and Satterfield allow that if Hamas had been diverting substantial aid, that would have been a grave problem that potentially required more oversight. But they insist that the terrorist group did not divert aid by dwelling on a misleadingly narrow definition of diversion, writing that although “criminal gangs” may have seized aid, Hamas was not “physically diverting U.S.-funded goods” and “there was no evidence of substantial Hamas diversion of any major assistance funded by the UN or nongovernmental organizations.”

As early as November 2023, the USAID Office of Inspector General identified Gaza as a high-risk area “for the potential diversion and misuse of U.S.-funded assistance,” stressing that USAID’s “investigative priority” was to “ensure that assistance does not fall into the hands of foreign terrorist organizations including, but not limited to, Hamas.” In the same statement, USAID defines aid diversion to include not only the physical takeover of aid but also the imposition of taxes, duties, and fees on the agency’s awardees and beneficiaries—which Lew and Satterfield concede was widespread.

Over the course of 2024, Israeli intelligence assessments concluded that aid managed by UN-affiliated agencies was consistently diverted by Hamas. (It is important to emphasize that the widespread nature of the diversion was already known to Israeli intelligence agencies even earlier.) Hamas used a variety of methods, including commandeering deliveries, imposing taxes and fees, smuggling prohibited goods through aid distribution systems, and directly infiltrating aid organizations. According to Israeli intelligence, in 2024 aid diversion generated an estimated $500 million in revenue for Hamas, its largest single source of income. This revenue financed the group’s efforts to recruit new fighters and exercise control over the Gazan population. Although it was certainly not what Lew and Satterfield intended, continued advocacy for this broken system had the effect of prolonging the war in Gaza.

The foundation of the claim by Lew and Satterfield that Hamas did not divert substantial humanitarian aid is their allegation that until January 20, 2025, neither the Israeli military nor the UN shared evidence to that effect with them—or even privately asserted it. I am aware of many meetings in which Israeli representatives (including IDF officials) explicitly presented evidence of aid diversion by Hamas to senior U.S. officials, including at least one of the two authors.

WHERE CREDIT IS DUE Lew and Satterfield choose to lay the blame on Israel for an increase in hunger in Gaza this summer. But the incompetence of UN affiliates was responsible for that debacle. Despite the UN’s accusations about logistical difficulties, the IDF sought to help by opening additional humanitarian no-combat corridors in July to facilitate additional aid distribution. But UN affiliates continued to fail to deliver aid in the required quantities, all while persisting with fallacious claims that Israel was blocking aid.

Perhaps the UN’s most egregious failure has been its refusal to cooperate with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was established in May to prevent the diversion of aid and deliver food directly to civilians rather than terrorists. Contrary to what Lew and Satterfield claim, the GHF did not become Gaza’s “primary food distribution model.” Parallel to the GHF, UN distribution mechanisms continued to operate. The GHF repeatedly offered to deliver aid on the UN’s behalf, a no-brainer proposal that would have immediately ameliorated any UN concerns about its own distribution capacity or the safety of its workers. But the UN refused the offer. To their credit, Lew and Satterfield called on the UN to cooperate with the GHF, but they understated the consequences of that noncooperation.

The UN claimed that it would not allow the GHF to deliver food on its behalf—or let the IDF secure a perimeter around its convoys—because of a supposed policy opposing the “militarization” of aid. It did not have the same qualms about exposing its aid deliveries to hijacking by armed Hamas gunmen. This hypocrisy is only a local expression of a global phenomenon: in conflict zones around the world, the UN has a long record of failing to prevent terrorist groups from seizing aid. In Gaza, the UN has withheld aid to adhere to a purported ethical principle it does not truthfully uphold.

Lew and Satterfield allege that Israel has used aid as a “coercive means to pressure Hamas.” The very opposite is true: the UN treats aid as a coercive means to pressure Israel politically. UN officials have attached their complaints about difficulties delivering aid to Gaza to calls for an end to the war—a political agenda that was unsurprising for a parent organization that spends a great deal of time condemning Israel but that falls far outside the mandate of UN aid organizations. All the while, more food went missing from people in need, prolonging Hamas’s campaign of terror and Israel’s military campaign.

Dragging its feet on delivering aid effectively has been politically convenient for the UN. Implementing efficient aid systems immediately would have forced it to admit that a unilateral cease-fire was not a prerequisite to feeding the hungry.

It was a strategic imperative for Israel to break the link between Hamas and humanitarian aid by securing Gaza with alternative solutions. Israel always sought to do exactly that. The claim that Israel denied food to Gazans to worsen a humanitarian crisis is untrue. Organizations such as the GHF met the moment. Those who refused to do so, as well as those who supported them, failed the people of Gaza and undermined the stability of the region.

YECHIEL (MICHAEL) LEITER is the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Revisionist History Andy Hall In their article, Lew and Satterfield misrepresent their role in facilitating humanitarian assistance to Gaza and minimize the level of suffering that Palestinians faced during their tenures as the U.S. ambassador to Israel and the U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian needs, respectively. Between January 2024 and June 2025, my colleagues and I served months-long rotations on the Disaster Assistance Response Team that USAID established in October 2023 to coordinate the U.S. government’s humanitarian assistance with UN partners and nongovernmental organizations in Gaza. (The DART was discontinued in June 2025 as part of the dissolution of USAID.)

As mandated by the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, USAID often deployed DARTs—staffed by highly trained disaster-relief specialists—to coordinate and implement the U.S. government’s response to humanitarian catastrophes. In Gaza, the DART oversaw the disbursement of hundreds of millions of dollars the government contributed to relief programs undertaken by the UN and partner NGOs. It was tasked with gathering information on humanitarian needs, population displacements,