(RNS) — Johnnie Moore, the face of the embattled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the new nonprofit commissioned to distribute food aid in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, has long said he believes Christians are called to do great things for God and to help the world become a better place.
So when the U.S. State Department asked him earlier this year to work on a new relief effort for Gaza, according to Moore, the public relations guru and onetime faith adviser to President Donald Trump jumped at the chance.
“I’m a Christian,” Moore, 42, told Religion News Service in an email. “There’s nothing more Christian than feeding people. How could I say no?”
The reasons for anyone to decline are many. In May, as GHF was beginning operations, its executive director Jake Wood, a well-respected aid veteran, stepped down, saying the aid organization’s work could not remain consistent with “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
GHF has since become a pariah in the eyes of the United Nations and established humanitarian groups, who accuse GHF of violating humanitarian standards while endangering civilians. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed seeking food since May, when Israel ended an aid blockade and started allowing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by the US and Israel, to start operations.
Of that number, “1,021 were killed in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation …