Lately, the media’s focused its critical lens on the brutality of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza, in particular at aid hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has drawn criticism due to what some have called its “militarized” approach to handing out food to a starving population. Particularly disturbing are the reports of the IDF allegedly killing Gazan civilians at and around these aid distribution points run by the non-profit based in Delaware.
A first-hand, detailed account of the IDF shooting a child, told by Tony Aguilar, a former GHF contractor, has stirred up a storm of outrage among a global audience that's primed—just as the media is—to accept anti-Israel stories lacking corroboration of any kind. Aguilar claims that, on May 28, as he was on the job in Gaza, a young boy named Amir—barefoot and hungry—approached him. After a brief interaction, as the boy headed back home, Aguilar claims the IDF opened fire around him, and Amir was shot to death. Aguilar’s not saying it was an intentional murder. While the anti-Zionist crowd on the Left is convinced that the IDF shoots into crowds out of murderous rage, Aguilar’s claiming that the IDF’s reckless crowd control tactics—e.g. using bullets to keep the crowd within certain parameters—were to blame.
The media jumped on the story. They no longer require a second source in order to run such explosive reporting. It's all about whether or not the story fits into their narrative. The GHF, however, launched its own investigation of the incident. A couple of weeks of high-risk detective work revealed that “Amir” (real name: Abdul) was alive, living with his mother. The investigators ascertained his identity with biometrics, and from a shirt still in his possession matching the photograph of the shirt he was wearing at the time of his supposed death.
Aguilar didn't go to the media until after the GHF fired him for misconduct and poor performance, after which the contractor pleaded to get his job back, telling the group he could be their “best friend or worst nightmare.” When that threat failed, the former Green Beret Lt. Col. went to the BBC and gave interviews describing war crimes at GHF sites. The Israeli-backed GHF is sensitive about such claims, as the media’s been pushing the narrative that the organization’s operational model, which places distribution centers in militarized zones with limited access, poor crowd control, and an IDF presence, has become a recipe for civilian deaths.
Unlike the GHF, the media did zero investigative work to validate Aguilar ’s story. The BBC interviewed Aguilar, and disseminated his accounts of war crimes while saying he’d resigned from his contractor position rather than getting fired. I can find no evidence that the BBC has corrected this reporting. Regardless, such corrections are generally ignored.
Al Jazeera ran this headline: “GHF whistleblower says boy killed by Israel just after he collected aid.” Next, on August 1, they aired a video in which Aguilar provided vivid, detailed first-hand testimony: “I call that a war crime,” he said. For follow-up coverage, Al Jazeera ran a video titled “Relative of photographed boy killed at Gaza aid site can’t find his body.” The relative was the boy's stepmother. He was found alive with his birth mother. There's no evidence that Al Jazeera has offered any corrections despite significant developments since their original reporting.
Despite the fact that the GHF investigation, which concluded on July 3, 2025, had proven Aguilar to be a liar, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter calling on the Trump administration to stop funding the organization and turn food distribution in Gaza back to the UN. Aguilar ’s story, told with emotion and great detail, strikes a sizable group of people as convincing. Tucker Carlson had Aguilar on his show, where he told the host that the GHF treated Gazan civilians like “animals.” The GHF, however, says it has internal messages in which their former employee praises the group. Aguilar also told Carlson: “This little boy was similar in age to my son. Brown eyes, my son has brown eyes. I see my son's face when I look at him. He's not lSIS, not a combatant. On the 28th of May—I didn't get this second hand, I didn't see it from afar. Other people saw it.” But “Amir” is still alive, so nobody saw it. Carlson’s credibility at this point is so low that it's safe to discount anything one of his guests says.
In a video that Bernie Sanders released on his YouTube channel, Aguilar claimed that one of his fellow contractors—their job was to provide security for the GHF—shot into a crowd of Gazans and yelled, “Woo hoo!” when he saw a man fall down from the shot. At another aid hub, Aguilar said he witnessed a contractor throw a stun grenade into a crowd, after which a donkey cart was brought in to carry the dead woman away.
These are horrific claims, but it’s impossible to believe them, given the discredited source. And how is it ethical for Sanders to disseminate them? Even though Aguilar gave inconsistent details, the media helped him amplify the narrative that the combination of the IDF with the GHF was leading to the deaths of many Gazans. Now the media’s scrambling. In June, 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 Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which blamed the IDF. Belief in that group’s announcements takes naivete or bias. This CNN report received more than 2.4 million views before it was corrected, but only 448,000 views in the corrected version. MSNBC was also forced to make a correction reporting that 60 Palestinians were killed at a GHF aid hub. The cable network simultaneously released a video describing controversies surrounding the GHF, but it remained up on the MSNBC website even after the correction.
Consumers of news content tend to believe whatever their favorite media outlets tell them. Tony Aguilar knew from the beginning that his tale about a sweet young boy, who’d kissed his hand out of respect, was gunned down by the IDF—the Left's equivalent of Hamas—would blow up. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies online disinformation, has concluded that the Aguilar story was part of a larger disinformation campaign, likely exploited by Hamas-linked, bot-using networks online to smear both the GHF and Israel.
Media outlets, because they're “useful idiots,” went along with this cynical game. One of the consequences is that the boy and his mother were evacuated to an undisclosed location out of the fear that Hamas would murder him. Those buying the reports that the IDF was shooting into crowds of Gazans might consider that doing so is a lose-lose situation for both the IDF and Israel, which are already taking so much international heat for their actions in Gaza. Skepticism of media reports is the first step on the road to understanding the truth. It must be remembered that truth is hard to find when it's shrouded in the “fog of war.”
