The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?
No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
We don't know many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
Sure it is when Israel is funding other groups that are known for stealing aid. It changes the entire narrative.
Israel backs an anti-Hamas armed group known for looting aid in Gaza. Here’s what we know
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-armed-groups-hamas-israel-lo...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-gaza-...
Secondly, nobody can tell who intercepted what, it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly.
> it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly
This seems like a pretty farfetched conspiracy theory. There are smart phones and other cameras all over Gaza, and zero evidence of this.
No it's not. Driving trucks full of food through hungry crowds will absolutely result in "shrinkage." That doesn't mean they're all Hamas.
I didn't say they're all Hamas; again the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians.
> the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians
Hell of a straw man. People care that the aid is getting to militants. Israel said it was getting to Hamas. That's the justification for limiting aid. If it's not getting to people who are shooting at Israeli troops, then it's not a security risk to provide more aid.
- Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang. Israel doesn't want an aid program where the bulk of the aid goes to their literal war enemies.
- Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians (except when it's sold at extortionate prices). Hence the shift to GHF which, while it has its own problems, does actually deliver most aid to ordinary civilians for free.
Granted.
> Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians
Sure. Now where is the evidence that most of the aid is being pilfered by armed anyones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Feb...
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
This is more of an argument in favor of the other side. It immediately becomes clear why they don't have the money.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100612001046/http://www.mcclat...
And/or the Israel-backed ISIS groups[1][2].
[1]: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sytu2q1mel
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-armi...
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
https://ghf.org/press-briefing-ghf-addresses-personnel-matte...
The only material evidence GHF has shown are small chunks of SMS conversations that are perfectly compatible with the "Aguilar was trying to convince GHF leadership to change policies" hypothesis, and WhatsApp broadcast of Aguilar telling his staff they were doing a great job.
Meanwhile, Aguilar has multiple photos and videos showing the conditions aid was distributed in which you can see right now on Youtube, testimony of seeing the GHF security contractors firing into crowds (to which the GHF replied by saying its contractors only fired above crowds, still a Geneva Convention violation), statistics that showed that people got shot during every single GHF distribution, matching testimony from Palestinian doctors and journalists and IDF whistleblowers, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming unless your curiosity cuts off as soon as you read the GHF damage control statements.
given that there is "statistics" (comfortable provided by hamas) of people getting shot during every single distribution, do you find it strange that there is not even 1 video of people actually getting shot en masse ? surely someone would have thought that it will be amazing video evidence that will be easy to make, as it happens daily, and a way to make israel look real bad, yet - nothing. the only video that comes close to it is when bullets very precisely hitting absolutely nothing few meters away from people.
with regards to " IDF whistleblowers", in case you missed the memo, the famous haaretz article with whistleblowers was mistranslated from hebrew. in hebew was used expression with meaning of "shooting at air/ground to prevent advancement". it was translated to english as "shooting at people". haaretz got it's 13 pieces for this
Yeah, guess what, that's still a breach of Geneva Conventions.
(Also basic common sense. The golden rule of gun safety is "Never point the gun at anything unless you intend to kill it", there isn't a "but shooting just over their heads is perfectly okay".)
First, Israel has consistently denied journalists access to those distribution sites, so the only video evidence we should expect to find are from civilians. Civilians who are in the middle of a stampede and getting shot at do not, as a general rule, stop to bring their smartphone out and film whoever is shooting at them (usually footage of shootings is filmed by people in buildings, obviously doesn't apply here).
The best video I could find is this one, showing people cowering and shots landing between them: https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/7/15/video-sho...
That's a really tight crowd, and bullets are clearly landing very close to them. Even if we assume nobody was hit by a stray bullet (which I find very improbable), that's still an egregious breach of the Geneva Conventions. Also, it seems similar to a pattern Aguilar described: IDF soldiers shooting at sand mounds, not realizing/caring that their bullets had enough penetration to go out the other side and kill people.
As for non video evidence, we have: photos of wounded people being taken away from GHF sites, testimonies of Gazan doctors who treated people of all ages wounded/killed by 7.62mm M80 bullets, testimonies of international doctors saying the same thing, a video published by Aguilar where we hear a SRS contractor bragging about hitting someone during a distribution, whistleblower testimonies, Gaza Health Ministries statistics (which the IDF treats as reliable, according to IDF leaks), UN statistics, and a mountain of testimonies from Gazan residents.
But if the only "actual" evidence you accept is video evidence in an area where the IDF is forbidding journalists, then the best I can give you is the link above.
Also, I'm stopping this discussion here, because the bullshit asymmetry principle is at play here: it took you 10 seconds to write your "there's no evidence because I say so" comment, and it took me one hour to sift through the media reports to write this rebuttal.
(Though for what it's worth, I do wish the evidence was better collected, and not scattered across MSM reports. In particular, I wish Aguilar had published a full dump of all the photos and videos he took.)
EDIT: This site aggregates social media reports related to the Gaza war. Some of them include footage of dead people near GHF sites, though none I could find that included the moment the person got shot.
Seems to me, if the claim is true, Israel is trying to give Hamas more power, not less.