US Army Vet Blows Whistle on Gaza Aid Operation

In a sobering firsthand account, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony “Tony” Aguilar has come forward with grave allegations about the operational reality of a U.S.-taxpayer-funded humanitarian mission in Gaza. Aguilar, a 25-year veteran and Green Beret, served a 45-day contract with UG Solutions, the security arm of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. His testimony paints a picture of a mission he describes as chaotic, cruel, and fundamentally at odds with American values.

Aguilar states that despite the mission's noble public goal of feeding a starving population, the entire process was tightly controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). "The IDF gave us our marching orders," he said, detailing how the military dictated the location, timing, quantity, and type of aid delivered. This control, however, was not paired with a safe or orderly distribution system.

He describes the scenes at distribution sites as "akin to the Hunger Games," a "survival of the fittest" where the strongest and fastest received aid, while children, women, and the disabled were often left with nothing. The method for controlling crowds, according to Aguilar, was consistently violent. "This happened every day at every distribution at every site," he stated, alleging that contractors routinely used pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets against civilians. He emphasizes this is not "Hamas propaganda" but what he personally witnessed.

His testimony includes specific, harrowing incidents. On May 29th, he filmed a contractor firing his weapon into a crowd, celebrating, and yelling "woohoo." Another contractor remarked, "I think you got one," to which the shooter replied, "Hell yeah, boy." Aguilar believes the Palestinian man who fell and never got up was killed. Days later, he saw a contractor’s stun grenade hit a woman in the head, killing her instantly; her body was removed on a donkey cart.

Aguilar connects this culture of negligence directly to a preventable tragedy. He reported that Site 3 was dangerously designed and would lead to deaths. His warnings were ignored, and on July 16th, 20 Palestinians were killed in a crush at that very location in Khan Yunis. "Those deaths are on us as Americans. We're complicit in that," he stated.

Contradicting official narratives often cited for such security measures, Aguilar asserted that in dozens of distributions, he "never saw a weapon, never saw a gun" among the Palestinians seeking aid. He described a population forced to walk 8-12 kilometers through an active war zone, often without shoes, to reach the sites. He also testified to seeing children who had died of starvation, being carried by their parents.

For Aguilar, a man who served for 25 years, the breaking point was the leadership's dereliction. After repeatedly proposing solutions that were ignored, he terminated his contract. "When I hung up my uniform, I didn't hang up my oath," he said. His decision to speak out is driven by the belief that the American public must know their tax dollars are funding a system that is not only failing to alleviate the crisis but is actively exacerbating the suffering of a vulnerable civilian population.