The United Nations Is on Hamas’s Side

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, May 29, 2025

 

For some reason, we don’t regard the United Nations’ criticisms of a joint U.S.-Israel public-private endeavor to distribute food aid to the Gazan people as we would Burger King’s critiques of the fare on offer from McDonald’s. They are the bleating protestations of an inferior competitor vying for attention in a space in which it pretends to be a leader but isn’t.

 

With the brazenness you might not expect from an institution that only last week was compelled to backtrack (but not apologize) for slandering Israel by falsely accusing it of systematically starving infants to death, the U.N.’s Human Rights Office had the temerity to accuse a U.S. charity working alongside Israel’s Defense Forces of botching the humanitarian mission in the Strip.

 

The operation that began on Wednesday got off to a “chaotic start” at one of four aid distribution sites, the New York Times reported. There, a crowd overran one distribution center. Several were injured in the stampede, and one person was killed. The IDF fired warning shots into the air to quell the unrest, and order was soon restored. U.N. officials insist that Israel “fired into the crowd” — a claim breathlessly retailed by the Washington Post as fact. But no independent sources have substantiated that allegation, and it is denied by the IDF and the private security working for the charity that operated the aid sites.

 

By most accounts, the effort to disburse humanitarian assistance to Gaza’s Palestinian population went smoothly after the initial tumult — disorder that followed after the U.S.-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) “intentionally relaxed its security protocols to safeguard against crowd reactions to finally receiving food,” the charity said in a statement. By the end of the day, GHF reported delivering about 8,000 boxes of food, about 462,000 meals, after which food prices in Gaza’s outstripped grocery stores declined sharply.

 

The United Nations was not impressed. “What we saw yesterday is a very clear example of the dangers of distributing aid in the way GHF is doing this,” one U.N. Human Rights Office functionary declared. “Exposing people to death and injury trying to get food.” Jonathan Whittall, whom the Times describes as a “senior U.N. humanitarian official,” summoned more evocative terms in his denunciation of the U.S. and Israel. “Yesterday, we saw tens of thousands of desperate people — under fire — storming a militarized distribution point established on the rubble of their homes,” he said. “The newly developed distribution scheme is more than just the control of aid,” Whittall continued. “It is engineered scarcity.”

 

The Israelis have struggled with the problem of getting aid into the right hands for months. That was a conundrum the Biden administration experienced amid its efforts to deliver aid to the Palestinian people, which was frustrated when the pier they erected to achieve that goal was shot at, shelled, and ultimately broke apart in the surf. Getting humanitarian assistance past the Hamas terrorists who requisition it and hold it hostage is a challenge.

 

As a workaround, the U.S.-Israel joint venture represents a qualified success. The response from Gaza’s people suggests that the effort has been warmly received. This humanitarian mission advances Israel’s strategic goals, too. By separating Gaza’s citizens from Hamas, the effort could help create conditions that bring about an end to this war on the terms Israel set after the 10/7 massacre.

 

The United Nations’ criticisms of this endeavor should not be viewed separately from the disastrous humanitarian response over which it has presided. In an entirely separate incident on Wednesday, hundreds of Gazans stormed a U.N.-managed food warehouse — a melee in which at least four people died. Separately, “Hamas said it had executed four men for looting some of the aid trucks that were allowed to enter Gaza on Monday,” the New York Post reported.

 

Hamas may, however, be even less credible than the U.N. Its fighters routinely requisition foreign aid to support their military operations and extort the public, although both Hamas and their U.N. abettors attribute these hijackings to “criminal gangs.” The terrorist group threatened Gazans with retaliation if they patronized the U.S.-Israeli aid centers and, according to one Trump official who spoke with the Free Press, “set up blockades to prevent Gazans from entering the foundation’s secure distribution sites.”

 

It’s not just Hamas’s legitimacy on the brink. The United Nations has invited a crisis of confidence in its own authority and competence. The overwrought protestations and spurious accusations coming both from the U.N. and media outlets that uncritically promulgate any allegation of Israeli perfidy should be read within that context.

 

It is only “controversial” when the United States and Israel disburse aid to the right targets — not when that aid is mishandled by international institutions and pilfered by terrorists who use it to retain power. Hamas doesn’t steal from the U.N.; only the “armed gangs” who somehow operate independent of Hamas, and whose criminal works are performed “under the watch of Israeli forces,” the odious Mr. Whittall insisted. It’s a crime against humanity when Israel halts the distribution of aid in response to Hamas’s seizures of it, but it’s just as bad when Israel restarts humanitarian assistance under more auspicious circumstances. That, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said, is little more than a “distraction from atrocities.” After all, the “model of aid distribution proposed by Israel does not align with core humanitarian principles.” What it doesn’t align with is the U.N. model, which allows Hamas to requisition as much international humanitarian assistance as it likes.

 

The United Nations has demonstrated that it is not a neutral party in this conflict. Its employees participated in the 10/7 massacre. The schools and medical facilities it operates have been used to stage attacks on Israelis. Its functionaries show no regard for their credibility when defending Hamas’s actions. And now, it’s running down this humanitarian mission — one that presents a real challenge to Hamas’s primacy on the Strip — in part because the initiative has exposed the U.N. as a willing accomplice in the very crimes its officials have the temerity to denounce.

 

The U.S.-Israeli aid initiative shows early signs of promise, not just insofar as it is achieving its stated objective. It’s also exposing the true allegiance of the United Nations. We can only hope the last of the U.N.’s credibility goes down with its allies in Hamas.