Gaza Aid Group With Evangelical Ties Targeted by ‘Free Palestine’ Movement
TEL AVIV – Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Interim Executive Director John Acree and his colleagues are facing harassment, vandalism, and mounting threats in the U.S. as they distribute food aid in one of the world’s most complex war zones, he recently told Metro Voice.
IN DEPTH REPORT FROM ISRAEL | By Kevin Deutsch
In his first public comments on the subject, Acree said that he, GHF chairman and evangelical Christian leader Rev. Johnnie Moore, GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay, and others working with the American nonprofit have been “victims of vicious and untrue accusations” that led to their being targeted in criminal acts.
Pro-Palestinian activists in mid-August scrawled “Death to the GHF” with red graffiti on the driveway of Acree’s Virginia home and damaged the wheels and rearview mirrors of his car. Close-up photos of the vandalism were later uploaded to social media by pro-Palestinian activists who said Acree was “complicit in genocide” and called GHF’s distribution sites “aid death traps.”
A few weeks earlier, protesters clad in keffiyehs marched outside Acree’s home, banging pots and pans while demonizing him and the GHF.
“You lose sleep over it, to be honest,” Acree said in response to a question by Metro Voice at a meeting with journalists Sept. 11 in Tel Aviv. “We do feel under threat. It’s the comments on X, LinkedIn, personal threats against myself and my family, the attacks and vandalism of my house and my vehicle. It’s no joke.”
The GHF, backed by both the U.S. and Israel, began bringing aid into Gaza in May 2025 to provide food directly to Palestinian civilians, while preventing supplies from being seized by Hamas. The initiative was created after years of criticism that aid sent through the United Nations was routinely diverted by Hamas and other militant factions to entrench their power in Gaza and finance terrorism.
Leadership of the Foundation shifted in June to Moore, the prominent evangelical figure and former faith adviser to President Donald Trump. Moore succeeded Jake Wood, a Marine veteran and disaster-relief philanthropist, who resigned from GHF over what he said were concerns about preserving humanitarian aid principles, including neutrality, in GHF’s work.
Acree, appointed GHF’s interim executive director in May, previously served as director of USAID’s Stabilization Office in Afghanistan. He also designed USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance disaster risk reduction strategies, and worked with the U.S. government and the UN to design the Operation Iraqi Freedom humanitarian response plan.
The humanitarian expert said crimes targeting him and other GHF officials have been reported to police, the FBI, and private investigators.
“I now have a private security person parked outside my house in the evenings and all night long,” Acree said.
Amount of Food Aid in Gaza
Since Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the ongoing war in Gaza, more than 2.68 million tons of humanitarian aid has entered the Palestinian enclave, according to Israeli government data. The GHF as of Sept. 10 said it had delivered over 161 million meals to Gazans along with 4,000 tons of potatoes, 1,000 tons of onions, and 778,000 Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) packets, which contain a nutrient-dense, peanut-butter like paste.
The RUSF meals were donated by Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian organization led by Franklin Graham. The group recently began staffing GHF sites with its medical teams and is providing quality health care to Gazans, according to Fay, the GHF spokesperson.
GHF currently distributes aid through four hubs in Gaza, with plans underway to extend its reach. The hubs are run by Palestinians from Gaza, more than 70 of whom currently work at the sites, Fay said. GHF plans to hire another 360 or more Gazans as its operations expand.
Humanitarian supplies in Gaza move through two primary avenues: One is the long-standing operation led mainly by the UN. The other is through GHF, which has faced relentless criticism from the UN, pro-Palestinian groups, and a hostile press as it aims to feed as many of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents as possible.
The United Nations doesn’t favor what we’re doing, and so they are amplifying, constantly, the bad news – much of it false.
“The United Nations doesn’t favor what we’re doing, and so they are amplifying, constantly, the bad news – much of it false,” Acree said. “We often have to rely on reaching out to the news source, whether it be the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, ABC, or CBS News, and sometimes even local Israeli news sources to tell them, ‘This is a false story,’ and to ask for a retraction or an apology. Sometimes we get a response, sometimes we don’t.”
The GHF, funded by the U.S. and private donors, operates independently of Israel but with IDF troops keeping watch from outside its aid hubs. IDF forces are never present within GHF sites, and the Foundation has no official relationship with Israel’s government, according to Fay.
Unlike UN-led aid efforts – which often required coordination with groups tied to Hamas – GHF’s efforts are structured to exclude the U.S.-designated terrorist organization entirely. At GHF locations, food and other relief items are handed directly to civilians with no role for Hamas in the process, Foundation officials said.
Earlier this year, Israel banned the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) due to its longstanding ties with Hamas and employment of Hamas members. According to recent UN data, nearly 90 percent of UN aid trucks delivered into Gaza since mid-May were looted or intercepted before reaching their distribution points.
GHF leaders say Hamas is constantly threatening the Foundation’s humanitarian operations and spreading disinformation about their work, with media outlets often parroting Hamas propaganda.
“We are a disruptor and a new way of doing things in a very old system. We are a threat to Hamas’ business model,” Fay said.
Hamas, still holding 48 Israeli hostages in Gaza, has killed some 460 Israeli soldiers since Israel’s ground operations began in October 2023. Hamas says more than 64,000 Palestinians have died in the war, a figure that does not distinguish civilians from combatants.
Accusations of Genocide
From the war’s start, Israel has faced accusations of genocide as well as claims it intentionally starves Gazans – allegations it vehemently denies.
Israel says it takes extensive measures to protect civilians in Gaza, including warnings before strikes and real-time legal oversight of operations by military lawyers. The U.S. Department of Defense says Hamas embeds fighters among civilians to maximize casualties, sacrificing Palestinian civilians with the aim of fueling global condemnation of Israel.
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern Warfare Institute at West Point, has argued that Israel “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history.” On X, he said Israel’s casualty ratios are better than any in modern warfare.
The debate over food insecurity in Gaza, an issue already driving international criticism of Israel, intensified last month when the UN-linked Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee declared famine conditions existed in Gaza City, and were likely to spread across the territory.
The IPC committee, which operates on a “reasonable evidence” threshold to determine whether famine conditions exist, cited data indicating acute malnutrition and rising mortality. The findings triggered sharp pushback from Israel, whose Foreign Ministry rejected the report as a document crafted to bolster Hamas’ narrative.
Israeli officials challenged the IPC’s methodology, arguing that its estimates of malnutrition and death rates were flawed. They also highlighted that more than 100,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the war began and noted a recent drop in food prices, which they contend undercuts claims of famine.
Death Rates Not Tied to Data in Genocide Report
According to the American Jewish Committee, which analyzed the IPC’s data, the IPC highlighted serious levels of hunger (36% of Gazans facing severe food insecurity) and malnutrition (16% of children measured as acutely malnourished), but the IPC’s third famine test—death rates—relied on inference rather than transparent data.
“This use of inference raises serious concerns, particularly because mortality is arguably the most central component of a famine declaration … While there are genuine reservations about aspects of the IPC’s methodology, serious humanitarian challenges in Gaza persist that cannot be overlooked,” the AJC said.
Acree said he does not have enough information to say whether there is famine in Gaza.
“I’ve heard people say there is a famine. I’ve heard people say, ‘No, that’s not true,’” Acree said in his first public comments on the famine claims. “They also use the word starvation. Those are two words [famine and starvation] that have very different and specific definitions, and it takes a very technical effort and group of people doing the surveys and techniques to make those determinations, and we don’t do that. So I can’t really comment on whether it’s true or false.
They trust us to come when we say we’re going to come to deliver food. And so we see an improvement in the areas that we work in.
“I can say that when we first started, we certainly witnessed a very, very desperate population that were very hungry. Those aren’t technical terms, but that’s how we saw it. Three months later, those same people are coming back and they look healthier. They are calmer. They trust us to come when we say we’re going to come to deliver food. And so we see an improvement in the areas that we work in.”
The UN has been highly critical of GHF from the start, blasting it for using armed private security to protect its armored aid trucks and relying on Israeli approval to operate its distribution hubs. The UN has also rejected offers to collaborate with the Foundation, including proposals GHF made to escort UN convoys or distribute UN aid stuck in warehouses.
More recently, the UN signaled it may be open to cooperation with GHF, stating publicly that “both models can coexist” following high-level meetings between Moore and UN officials, Fay said.
“They have a very high diversion rate, which is one of the problems GHF was created to solve, so we’re optimistic we can collaborate with the UN at some point during this process,” Fay said. “We’ve had no attacks on our convoys, and we’ve had none of our aid diverted. We believe our model is working and is safe and efficient, but we were never meant to and cannot solve the problem [of feeding all civlians] alone.”
The deaths of Gazans near aid hubs have become a major point of controversy in the war.
According to a UN report, at least 1,373 Palestinians were killed while seeking food in Gaza between May 27 and July 31; 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys. The UN attributed most of the killings to the Israeli military, but did not provide evidence for its conclusions.
Fay said GHF pushes the Israelis “every single day to deconflict, to use non-lethal means of crowd control and to make it safer throughout Gaza.”
“We do not share anything with the IDF or the government of Israel,” Fay said. “We wouldn’t be able to do some of the things we do with [Gazans] if we violated that [trust], so that is not an issue. We don’t take orders from the IDF other than, ‘You can open today or you can’t open today because of threats in the area.’ We’ve issued formal complaints to the IDF when warranted.”
The GHF is not letting propaganda campaigns aimed at demonizing them get in the way of their work, even as pro-Palestinian activists recently targeted both men in Israel.
Acree and Fay said the GHF is not letting propaganda campaigns aimed at demonizing them get in the way of their work, even as pro-Palestinian activists recently targeted both men in Israel.
Around the same time criminals vandalized Acree’s home in Virginia last month, protesters were marching outside his hotel in Tel Aviv. Radical Bloc, a left-wing group in Israel that promoted the protest, wrote on X: “We’re confronting GHF’s leaders in Tel Aviv — CEO John Acree, spokesperson Chapin Fay, and their team. GHF is not a humanitarian organization — it’s a weapon of genocide. We will find them, disrupt them everywhere until the siege is lifted and GHF is dismantled.”
Activists have also repeatedly targeted the Virginia home of Loik Henderson, a member of GHF’s board of directors. Vandals spray-painted his home’s driveway and spelled out “Gaza” on his front lawn, according to media reports.
Moore, too, has faced death threats and remains the target of harassment by pro-Palestinian groups.
During a protest near Moore’s Virginia home last month, members of the group Palestinian Youth Movement handed out flyers with a photo of the GHF chairman handing out aid above the tagline, “War Criminals in Our Backyard.” Messages written on the sidewalk outside Moore’s home read: “Your neighbor is a genocider.”
Moore, a Trump ally and expert in faith-based public relations, launched a PR firm called Kairos Company in 2015. He has worked with major clients such as the National Religious Broadcasters, the Museum of the Bible, and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.
During the first Trump administration, Moore served as a key evangelical adviser and was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Under Moore and Acree’s leadership, GHF says it will keep feeding Gazans and remain undeterred by campaigns to discredit its work.
“We’re very committed to seeing this through,” said Acree. “We are not walking away.”
Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist covering general assignment news and Jewish community issues. He regularly covers Jewish news for the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, St. Louis Jewish Light, and other publications. He has worked as a staff writer at a number of newspapers including The Miami Times, the Rio Grande SUN, the New York Daily News, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, and The Riverdale Press. He also writes about Jewish issues on his Substack, After October 7
