June 9, 2025
“The Americans are lying to us… They call it a humanitarian point then kill us there” —Arafat Siyam, whose brother was killed trying to get food aid
Sunday, June 1, 3 am: It’s pitch dark in southern Gaza but already thousands of Gazans desperate to feed their families have gathered near the Al-Alam roundabout along the coastal road west of Rafah which Israel had designated a safe area. It’s about a half-mile from the U.S.-run, Israel-supported “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) aid station which was due to open at 5:00 am.
Israel had starved Gaza for over 80 days, refusing to allow in food, water, medicine, fuel or other needed goods. The United Nations warned that it’s the only place on earth where the whole population is at risk of famine. Israel had recently let in a trickle of aid, but Gaza is still starving and many felt the new U.S. aid station was their only hope to quiet their achingly hungry children, crying for food.
Most had come on foot, some from miles away. They knew supplies were very limited and they had to get there early or lose out. This was the fourth time one man had tried to get food. Another said, “It’s like a race for food… Those who win the race get the aid.”
Around 3:30 am the crowd of some 10,000 or more people—stretching as far as the eye could see—began making their way to the aid site. Suddenly intense bursts of gunfire erupted, from snipers, drones, and tank-mounted machine-guns, seemingly coming from everywhere.
Bodies began falling, the dead and wounded dotting the ground. And the shooting continued for hours. “I could hear the screams of young people and others from their injuries,” one man told CNN. “In front of me were four young men with direct injuries to the head… there was a person next to me who was injured by a bullet in his eye… Even retreating was almost impossible, and everyone was lying on the ground unable to lift their heads because if you lifted your head, you would get shot.”
Mohammad Abu Rezeq was shot in the stomach. He said Israeli forces were deliberately targeting the crowd. “I have seen a lot of soldiers in this war. When they want to clear an area or warn you, they shoot around you. But yesterday, they were shooting to kill us.”1
Mohammed Abdulal had come from 18 miles away. Then a bullet ripped through his face, leaving him writhing in pain.
A young boy cried in agony beside his dead mother. “She went to get aid and this is what they do to us!” he screamed.
“The Americans are lying to us,” Arafat Siyam said. His brother had just been killed. “Since when have they cared about humanitarian work? They call it a humanitarian point then kill us there.”
The Death Trap of U.S.-Israeli “Humanitarian” Aid
The dead and wounded flooded Rafah’s hospitals. The Red Cross said its field hospital was overwhelmed, calling the slaughter the “highest number of weapon-wounded in a single incident” in the year it had been open. Some 32 people had been killed and over 200 wounded, dozens seriously. All the dead had been shot in the head or chest. These weren’t “warning shots” as the Israeli military claimed afterward.
Dr. Victoria Rose is a volunteer surgeon who treated some of the wounded. “There are hundreds and thousands of children needlessly dying, children being blown up, children being starved and children dying of otherwise preventable illnesses,” she said. “[I]t’s a mass destruction of an entire population, and we can’t stand by and let this happen any longer.”
Israel and U.S.: Shifting Lies vs. the Truth Caught on Video
Israel’s military immediately claimed that accounts of it firing on Gazans near or within the aid distribution site were “false reports.” Later, it said that troops had “carried out warning fire” against “several suspects moving toward them, deviating from the designated access routes.”
The U.S.-run GHF backed up the Israeli version, insisting: “There was no gunfire in the (distribution) center and also not in the surrounding area.” It added, “All aid was distributed today without incident. We have heard that these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas. They are untrue and fabricated.”
These are despicable lies, contradicted by mountains of testimony and video, including an in-depth investigation from CNN that found that Israel’s IDF was firing from 500-1000 yards from those seeking aid (i.e., they were not advancing on the military) and that the bullets recovered matched those from machine guns mounted on Israeli tanks.
Then there’s the fact that these massacres keep happening. The very next day, over 30 people were killed and dozens wounded at the very same site. As this is being written, more killings at “aid” stations are being reported. Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid sites opened on May 27, at least 102 Palestinians have been killed and over 490 injured in similar attacks.
Then there’s the overall context: Israel’s systematic genocide aimed at making it impossible for Palestinians to live—or perhaps even stay—in Gaza. The absolute destruction of the infrastructure and ethnic cleansing. The mass slaughter, including the killing or wounding of 50,000 Palestinian children.2
“The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said. “This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived two million people of the essentials they need to survive.”
The Trump/MAGA Fascist Regime Doubles Down—Directly Joining Israel in its Genocide—on the Ground in Gaza!
For the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system, Israel is an irreplaceable bastion and tool to maintain their domination of the strategic region of the Middle East. For decades the rulers of both parties have backed it with arms, intelligence, political support and more. “Genocide” Joe Biden threw his full support to Israel when it launched its Gaza genocide following Hamas’s reactionary attack of October 7, 2023—supplying billions in arms, vetoing one UN resolution after another, and much more.
But the Trump fascist regime has taken that support to a whole other level, a dangerous leap beyond what the Biden administration did. As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has analyzed, for the Trump fascist regime “raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.”
This has been gruesomely illustrated in Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera on the Mediterranean” by ethnically cleansing all the Palestinians, and how Netan-Nazi has eagerly implemented this in his brazenly genocidal “Operation Gideon’s Chariots.”
Now, the Trump regime is doubling down again—organizing the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” setting up aid sites in Gaza, and deploying armed U.S. contractors to do security in them.3
See also:
These aid sites are an important part of Israel’s military operation, called “Gideon’s Chariots.” This is aimed at quieting international outrage by allowing a trickle of food to come into Gaza, supposedly easing the prospect of mass starvation. The goal—further terrorizing the whole population and enabling Israel to continue its campaign of annihilation!
These U.S. aid stations also serve to drive starving Palestinians to evacuate the north of Gaza and come to the south for food. This is in line with Israel’s plan to squeeze the entire population of two million Palestinians into a corner of land in Gaza’s far south making up 20 percent of its land. From there, Israel’s goal is confining, and then expelling or diminishing, the population, in one way or another, immediately or over time.
And again, these aid stations are right in the killing fields of Gaza.
STOP the U.S.-Israeli Genocide on the Palestinian People! End the Siege on Gaza! The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go!
In the face of growing global condemnation, Israel could not carry out its genocidal campaign without the backing of the fascist Trump regime. Forcing that regime from power through mass, nonviolent political protest would be an incredibly powerful blow against Israel and its ability to continue carrying out its towering crimes against humanity.4
This is why we wrote last week:
The protests demanding an end to the U.S.-Israeli Genocidal Slaughter of the Palestinian people must also take a leap. And while the fight to defeat the fascist Trump regime and the fight against the U.S.-Israeli genocide are not identical, they do need to overlap—each getting strength and determination from the other.
Stop the U.S.-Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinian People!
In The Name of Humanity, We Refuse To Accept A Fascist America!
The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go—NOW!
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FOOTNOTES:
1. Quotes and descriptions from CNN, New York Times, Middle East Eye. CNN described what went into its investigation of the shootings:
A CNN investigation into a deadly incident near an aid distribution site in southern Gaza on Sunday points to the Israeli military opening fire on crowds of Palestinians as they tried to make their way to the fenced enclosure to get food. Multiple videos geolocated by CNN place the gunfire near a roundabout where hundreds of Palestinians had gathered about half a mile (800 meters) away from the militarized aid site in Tel al-Sultan in Rafah.
The designated route to the site along the coast, Al-Rasheed Street, is in an area under the Israeli military’s control and Israeli troops operate at a base nearby.
Weapons experts said the rate of gunfire heard in the footage, as well as images of bullets retrieved from victims, were consistent with machine guns used by the Israeli military that can be mounted on tanks.
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2. In a statement, UNICEF wrote, “How many more dead girls and boys will it take? What level of horror must be livestreamed before the international community fully steps up, uses its influence, and takes bold, decisive action to force the end of this ruthless killing of children?” UNICEF: Israel Has Killed or Injured Over 50,000 Children in Gaza Since Start of Genocide,Democracy Now!, June 3, 2025. [back]
3. Putting a Christian Fundamentalist, Trump-Loving Fascist in Charge: The creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its operation in Gaza have sparked international outrage and condemnation. Even the original U.S. head of the foundation quit over its lack of autonomy from Israel’s war plans.
The Trump regime has responded by appointing Rev. Johnnie Moore, a high-level Christian Evangelical fascist operative and PR professional, with close ties to Trump, Israel and Netanyahu, to run the organization. (Christian fundamentalist fascists are a key component of Trump’s base and rabid supporters of Israel based on their Biblical literalism, come hell or high water.) Moore is close to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who has stated there are no Palestinians, no Israeli occupations, and who has advocated for Israel to annex—fully seize—the West Bank.
The GHF has already spread the lie that everything is fine at the aid sites, never mind the hundreds of bodies scattered about. And Moore has claimed that the aid effort is “working” and should be “celebrated.” Evangelical Leader Close to Trump, Netanyahu Named New Director of Gaza Aid Fund, Haaretz, June 3; He Attended Prayer Meetings in the White House. Now He’s Chairman of a Gaza Aid Group. New York Times, June 5. [back]
4. There are ongoing negotiations between different parties over a potential ceasefire in Gaza. The situation is murky and analysis of the various sides is beyond the scope of this article. There’s a lot of speculation in the media about Trump getting frustrated with Netanyahu. We obviously do not know the internal discussions and debates, but we do know that Netanyahu continues to celebrate the “Trump plan” of purging all Palestinians from Gaza and that Trump continues to send massive amounts of military equipment and funding, while providing political cover to the ongoing genocide, including all the ways we’ve listed above. [back]