Anthony Aguilar, a retired US Army Green Beret who worked as an armed contractor for the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has told the BBC that he witnessed the Israeli military commit war crimes against unarmed, desperate Palestinians during his time in Gaza.
“I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians. I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car of civilians that were simply driving away from the site. I witnessed mortar rounds being fired at the crowds of people to keep them controlled,” Aguilar said.
The Army veteran said that the other GHF contractors were not adequately trained. “My professional opinion on how the sites were established was what I would describe as amateur. Inexperienced, untrained, no idea of how to conduct operations of this magnitude. That would be my most benign assessment,” Aguilar said.
“In my most frank assessment, I would say that they’re criminal. In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population. An unarmed, starving population. I’ve never witnessed that in all of the places I’ve been deployed to war until I was in Gaza, at the hands of the IDF and US contractors,” he added.
When asked if he was a witness to war crimes, Aguilar said, “Without question, I witnessed war crimes. I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces. Without a doubt, using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, firing tank rounds into unarmed civilians, is a war crime.”
Since the GHF began operating in Gaza at the end of May, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to reach aid, the majority near GHF sites, while others were killed trying to reach UN aid trucks. Aguilar’s testimony aligns with eyewitness accounts of Palestinians who survived IDF attacks on aid seekers.
The Israeli military has actually admitted to firing on unarmed Palestinians near GHF sites, including with artillery rounds, but it disputes the numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry, claiming they’re inflated. But the numbers align with the daily reports coming out of Gaza, and the UN has released its death toll, which was higher than the Health Ministry’s.
