The Blogs: What’s curious about the GHF? No one’s curious

I find it interesting to observe the way in which the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been reported on since it began aid operations at its first distribution centre in Rafah on 26 May.

I understand that it is spoken of negatively by the UN and its various agencies—of course, because what it is doing is meant not only to supplant UN aid but also halt the malevolent political doctrines by which the UN helps to perpetuate Gazan victimhood and grievance.

What I don’t understand is why such feelings aren’t contextualised in media reporting but instead are taken as foundational.

I would have said that, whatever difficulties the GHF may have experienced, internally and in its execution of its duties, it deserved to be reported on impartially, but there’s been no sign of such openness by the press.

You would expect any new organisation, set up quickly and in a theatre of war, to run into problems; that in itself is not a mark against it. Although aid distribution was suspended twice this last week, due to overcrowding at distribution sites, GHF was nonetheless able to hand out approximately 25,000 food boxes, equating to about 1.5 million meals, in its most recent full day of operation.

Much more is needed but from a standing start, that seems to me astonishing and worthy of applause. And yet there’s not only been no open-handed, value-free reporting on its achievement, there hasn’t even been any simple journalistic curiosity about how it managed to do what it did.

Instead, coverage has been slanted wholly towards three days in which shooting occurred, immediately attributed exclusively to Israel, even though (unlike Hamas) Israel had a positive disincentive to get embroiled in shooting, and towards the resignation of Jake Wood, the GHF’s founder, on the grounds that the organisation could not be an impartial humanitarian actor.

Woods’s resignation has also not been explored journalistically. Of course GHF is not an impartial actor and of course it’s not neutral. But Woods knew that from the start. It was set up by him to pursue a political aim, in the knowledge of what is a classic humanitarian dilemma: Can you deliver aid effectively and safely in a war zone without aligning with power? And if you align with power, can you still claim to be neutral?

The fact is, all humanitarian operations carry political baggage, especially in war zones, and Woods’s behaviour isn’t even uncommon in the NGO world: founders or early leaders often leave when real-world constraints or political interferences collide with founding ideals.

So while it’s accurate to say that the GHF has a built-in political alignment—to bypass institutions like UNRWA, seen by many as compromised; to assert more control over where aid goes, who receives it and under what conditions; and to prove that a Western-led alternative model of aid distribution in Gaza is possible, that does not mean that its alignments are necessarily malicious.

In the end, however, Woods put himself and his reputation first and ahead of the urgent mission—to bring the Gazans aid and doctrinal independence—that GHF was set up to carry out. I’d have said that that deserved open journalistic inquiry.

But, as with GHF itself, there has been none—from any quarter: instead, a global conspiracy of silence. Some of us cannot fail to read that as a massive moral failure by the world’s media, and as an operational failure—the required professional instincts simply haven’t kicked in—but also, and perhaps most worryingly, as an attitudinal failure.

And that’s shorthand for global institutional bias.