US Firm BCG Pulls Out of US’s Gaza “Humanitarian” Scheme as Casualties Rack Up

Major U.S. firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has pulled out of its involvement in the U.S. and Israel’s supposed humanitarian aid scheme in Gaza as human rights groups have warned that the operation is actually a “death trap” that has led to hundreds of casualties so far.

BCG withdrew its ground operation team from Tel Aviv on Friday, The Washington Post reports, and has terminated its contract with the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). One of the senior partners in charge of the operation has also been placed on leave as the firm conducts an internal review, a spokesperson said.

The firm was selected last fall to develop the idea that quickly became yet another avenue for Israeli military massacres when it first opened aid sites last Wednesday. Sources told The Post that the operation at large will be in jeopardy without BCG’s involvement, with the firm in charge of setting prices for contractors who built GHF’s four distribution centers in Gaza.

“They are actually making the wheels turn,” one person familiar said of BCG’s role.

GHF seems determined to continue the operation, however, and has reportedly tapped an evangelical leader and vehement Christian Zionist, Johnnie Moore, to lead the group after its CEO Jake Wood resigned last week.

Moore, in charge of the project seen as a way for Israel and the U.S. to further their extermination of Palestinians, once lauded President Donald Trump’s plan to forcibly expel all Palestinians from Gaza.

Humanitarian groups have shunned the GHF operation since it was first announced months ago, saying that it is just another way for Israel to deny Palestinians crucial needs like food and water.

On Monday, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) condemned the operation as a “death trap” and reiterated that the only way for Israel to meet its international humanitarian obligations is to stop obstructing aid work by the UN and other established groups.

Over 100 aid seekers in Gaza have been killed since GHF began operations, according to health officials, with Israeli forces seemingly indiscriminately firing on places where people are gathering on their way to the distribution sites. Overall, Israeli forces have killed or injured 600 Palestinians near three GHF sites, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, just over the course of the past week.

This includes 27 Palestinians killed and at least 90 injured on Tuesday when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd near the group’s site in Rafah, the third such incident in three days.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross in the occupied Palestinian territories, the group’s field hospital in Rafah received 184 patients after the shooting.

“In the span of one week, staff at the Red Cross Field Hospital have responded to five mass casualty incidents, four of which occurred in the last 96 hours alone,” the group said. “Today is the highest number of weapon-wounded patients received in a single incident since the establishment of the field hospital over a year ago.”

These massacres, targeting crowds of Palestinians desperate to stave off famine caused by Israel’s aid blockade, have had horrific consequences. One man, identified by Euro-Med Monitor as A.B., said he was able to dodge gunfire on the way to the site and obtain a package, but gave it to a woman on the way out who was pleading for help for her and her children.

He turned around to reenter the site when he heard an Israeli drone overhead, broadcasting: “You animals, go away, the supply is out.” Then, as he left, he heard a child’s cry, and saw that the woman he gave his package to had been killed.

“When I returned to my tent, I swore before God and in front of my wife and children that I’d never go to an aid distribution centre, no matter how hard life becomes, even if I had to eat sand,” A.B. said.