Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Kassy Akiva.
The truck drivers tasked with transporting aid throughout Gaza say they have been villainized while they put their lives at risk, often attacked by mobs and armed looters as they try to carry out the humanitarian missions.
Near Gaza's Kerem Shalom crossing, where thousands of United Nations aid truckloads sit undelivered and rotting in the sun, drivers told The Daily Wire of the dangers they face on the road. One driver explained that the mobs use tools to yank their doors open and assault them. Another driver said it feels like
"a thousand" people climb on the windshield, completely blocking his line of sight.
"We can't see a thing," one driver in the group of men who transport aid for various humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, said. Another pointed to a truck hit by gunfire behind him during the interview.
"People make us aid drivers feel like we caused the war that we caused hunger in Gaza, that we're thieves, that we run people over," one driver said.
"We have videos to prove that people cause the problems."
The drivers' comments come as new UN data shows that almost all of its humanitarian aid in Gaza is being looted before it reaches its destination. In July, 1,123 trucks collected aid, but 1,055 were intercepted by Gazan civilians or
"armed actors," leaving just 73 trucks-6.5% of the total-successfully delivered.
"There is no future for Gaza, no future left," one of the drivers said.
"No homes, no water, nowhere to sleep, no food! Half this aid is damaged under the sun. The other half sold by thieves and traders."
"They break our doors to hit the driver," he said. The drivers claimed that they face problems when entering the dense areas with aid and when exiting.
Several trucks nearby were fortified with metal cages over the windows and windshields and barbed wire on top.
The drivers hope that in the future there will be an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and that the war will come to an end.
"We want to be done with this," one driver said.
Another-who said he was working in Israel at the time of the October 7 massacre-reflected positively on his time working in Israel.
"They, as a people, treat us well, war or not," he said.
"I was treated with kindness. I lived with them and worked there two years before the war... My boss gave me complete trust."
When asked who they'd like to rule Gaza, they were open to all options.
"Anyone," one driver said.
"Just rid us of this grief so we can commute in peace."
Last week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed organization responsible for monitoring global hunger, declared a famine in Gaza City. According to critics, including the Israeli government, the classification relied on faulty and Hamas-sourced data.
"An objective assessment of the IPC report exposes a systematic lowering of standards: neutrality of safeguards abandoned, critical stakeholders excluded, data selectively used, projections skewed toward worst cases, famine thresholds bent until they no longer matched the IPC manual itself, and transparency sidelined as key datasets and analytical reasoning remain inaccessible to outside scrutiny," Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, posted on X.
The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - which says it has distributed over 138 million meals since launching on May 26 - says it does not face looting by either armed actors or Gazan civilians, thanks to its model of handing out aid from secure sites. GHF is responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump's aid initiative in Gaza, which aims to deliver humanitarian aid directly to civilians while preventing Hamas from intercepting supplies.
For months, GHF has offered to assist the UN in delivering aid, but the offer has gone unanswered. Instead, the UN has vilified the group, claiming it endangers civilians by distributing aid at locations near Israeli Defense Forces operations.
The GHF has pushed back on the accusations, noting that aid supplies are emptied daily by Gazan civilians, many of whom express thanks for the free assistance.
"The media says our sites are a death trap, but our workers are interacting with these people every day," Johnnie Moore, the GHF executive chairman, told The Daily Wire.
"We see at our distribution sites something people haven't seen in a long time in the Gaza Strip: we see smiles every single day on the faces of women, on the faces of children."
Earlier this month, over 220 organizations signed a letter supporting the GHF and urging the UN to collaborate with the organization.
poll#220
