A recent report has revealed that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.-backed nonprofit responsible for distributing food aid in the Gaza Strip, has become the target of a coordinated disinformation campaign led by Hamas and amplified by various international organizations, including the United Nations, the New York Post reports.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) found that Hamas deployed bots and trolls to discredit the GHF’s work, pushing narratives on social media and in select media outlets that depicted GHF’s food deliveries as causing “starvation and gunfire.” These efforts, according to the NCRI, aimed to erode trust in the United States and divert attention from Hamas’ own actions, ensuring blame for violence near aid sites fell primarily on Israel and GHF rather than on Hamas itself.
Since operations began in late May, GHF has distributed over 75 million meals to Gaza’s population of around 2 million. However, soon after the first distributions, GHF was hit by what the NCRI describes as a “deliberate narrative assault” driven by Hamas-sourced information and widely echoed by U.S. and European journalists. This campaign intensified after violent incidents near aid distribution sites, where stories blaming the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and GHF for harm to civilians were amplified online.
According to The Post, “The NCRI report, which was produced alongside Rutgers University’s Social perception lab, also cited retractions made by news outlets over violence at the GHF aid sites in Gaza.” The Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, and MSNBC are among networks that have had to issue retractions on reporting of the violence in Gaza.
In one recent example, “CNN corrected its report of a shooting near a Gaza aid site which initially claimed at least 31 Palestinians had allegedly been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, who blamed the IDF,” The Post reports. “‘The report was published without obtaining a statement from the Israeli military, showing bias in the initial reporting,’ the NCRI report said. The original CNN report received more than 2.4 million views on X before it was corrected, while the new version garnered 448,000 views and includes the phrase at the end, ‘This story has been updated with additional developments.’”
GHF leadership has been highly critical of the United Nations’ approach to food distribution, likening it to a “mafia” system. Meanwhile, accusations have flown that GHF is not a legitimate relief organization but instead is serving as an intelligence operation under the guise of humanitarian work, an allegation repeated by Hamas and echoed in some United Nations statements.
