A former US Special Forces officer told the BBC he witnessed Israeli and US forces commit war crimes against starving civilians in Gaza.
Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a veteran of the Green Berets, said in an interview with the BBC on Friday that he resigned from his position at the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) after witnessing the shelling of unarmed civilians waiting for aid.
“I’ve never seen such brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population—an unarmed, starving population,” Aguilar told the BBC.
“I’ve never witnessed that in all the places I’ve been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza at the hands of the (Israeli forces) and US contractors.”
Aguilar described scenes in which Israeli soldiers and US security personnel fired live rounds, mortar shells, and tank rounds into crowds of Palestinians gathered for food distribution.
He recalled one incident where an Israeli Merkava tank targeted a civilian vehicle as it drove away from an aid site. He also said mortar rounds were launched into crowds “to keep them controlled.”
The former officer said he had no doubt about what he saw. “Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces, without a doubt,” he said.
“Using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, firing tank rounds into unarmed civilians is a war crime.”
Aguilar also criticized the leadership of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, calling the operation “amateur, inexperienced, and untrained,” and said those overseeing it had “no idea of how to conduct operations at this magnitude.”
His testimony adds to growing international criticism of Israel’s handling of humanitarian access to Gaza.
Since March, Israel has blocked aid deliveries into the besieged enclave, and a controversial new mechanism through the GHF, launched in late May, has done little to address the crisis, leading to widespread starvation.
More than 100 humanitarian organizations warned this week that famine is now spreading across Gaza, where basic food items have disappeared and families are surviving for days with little to no sustenance. People collapsing from hunger and exhaustion are now a common sight.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 127 people—including over 85 children—have died of starvation since March. In addition, more than 1,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed while trying to access aid at GHF-operated distribution points guarded by Israeli soldiers and US security contractors.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
Do BBC execs beginning about their own doom day? Did they just now remember God?
I’m a US citizen. I’m horrified at this war crime that the US government is profiting from. Other than not paying our taxes, I don’t know what US citizens can do — many of us didn’t vote for Trump. We never voted for this war against Gaza. #FreePalestine