Hamas ‘eats like kings,’ while our hostages starve

Today, Eli Sharabi stood before the United Nations Security Council and held up to the audience a photo of the family he lost. His wife Lianne, and his daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were all murdered by Hamas terrorists in the safe room of their home in Kibbutz Be’eri. His elder brother, Yossi, was also taken captive alongside him and has since been confirmed dead, and Hamas continues to hold his body. Looking directly at his audience, he said, ‘Remember this: Hamas eats like kings, while hostages starve.’

‘I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the UN and UNRWA emblems on them into the tunnels — dozens and dozens of boxes, paid for by your government,’ he said. ‘They would eat many meals a day from the UN aid in front of us, and we never received any of it.’ This was deliberate cruelty: in Hamas’ flaunting of their control over aid stolen from their own citizens in Gaza, they carried out a calculated humiliation of our hostages.

For the UN and its agencies, the implications of Sharabi’s testimony are profound: UN-labelled aid being systematically diverted by Hamas raises serious questions about the oversights, accountability and security of international aid operations, especially those in Gaza: the ability of Hamas fighters to seize UN aid on such a considerable scale indicates serious, deep vulnerabilities in the UN’s supply chain and distribution process. These are vulnerabilities that should, given that Hamas is a terrorist organization, have been anticipated and mitigated: When the first UN aid deliveries resumed on 21 October 2023, after 20 trucks carrying essential supplies into Gaza via the Rafah crossing in Egypt, it was already known that Hamas took hostages and massacred innocent civilians. Why would the UN trust them to feed their own people?

The first and most glaring failure lies in the lack of any secure delivery mechanisms: Humanitarian aid is typically delivered through designated entry points and distribution centers within Gaza, where it is meant to be managed by UN staff or local partners. The fact that Hamas was able to intercept these supplies on more than one occasion means that the security infrastructure at these points was either inadequate or had been compromised.

Once aid reaches Gaza, it has to be tracked and monitored. The apparent absence of such mechanisms makes the UN’s failures all the more illogical: Modern aid operations typically employ logistics technology – GPS tracking, inventory management systems, et cetera – in order to ensure that supplies reach their intended destinations. This leaves us with three conclusions: The first, that UN officials had knowledge of the diversion but were either powerless to stop it; the second, that they were unwilling to escalate the issue publicly for fear of diplomatic fallout; and the third, that these monitoring tools were either not in place or were deliberately bypassed – either by local intermediaries or by the officials themselves.

The UN frequently relies on local Non-Governmental Organization intermediaries (NGOs) – contractors and the like – to distribute aid within Gaza. If these NGOs were compromised by Hamas, either as a result of coercion or an existing ideological alignment, they may have facilitated the diversion of aid – keep in mind that Hamas operatives have reportedly posed as aid workers to gain access to distribution centers – to go instead to other parties.

The security of UN warehouses and storage facilities in Gaza is another major point of concern. Hamas’ apparent ability to seize what Sharabi described as ‘dozens and dozens of boxes’ of UN-labelled aid, these facilities were either poorly guarded or freely accessible to Hamas operatives. In other conflict zones, UN facilities are secured by their peacekeeper force or other local security forces. Where were they this time, and why is this conflict any different?

Hamas’ strategy in this is clear – to prolong the suffering of both Gazan civilians and the hostages. In doing so, they will create a humanitarian spectacle, and then blame Israel for the resulting chaos, a tactic that has been proven to be remarkably effective in manipulating global opinion. Sharabi has laid bare the hypocrisy of a terror organization that claims to defend Palestinian interests, while simultaneously exploiting Palestinian suffering for political game. Such is the reality of terror regimes. Humanitarian relief must be depoliticized and safeguarded from exploitation – but, perhaps more importantly, the plight of the hostages cannot be treated as a secondary concern: it must be central to any diplomatic or humanitarian strategy moving forward.

The lives of 59 hostages hang in the balance. The question is not whether Hamas will continue to exploit humanitarian aid – that much is clear. The question we should be asking ourselves is whether the international community, including the UN, will finally find the moral clarity and political will to put a permanent stop to it, or whether they will continue to turn a blind eye as hostages starve in Gaza.