THE SET-UP: The convoluted story of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” reads like a classic covert op … with key names popping up repeatedly as you follow breadcrumbs through a labyrinth of geopolitical power-players, financial interests, defense contractors, intelligence agencies, ironically-named front companies and smarmy henchmen.
The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” has it all … and more!
The “and more” part of many covert ops usually involves doing something illegal, immoral or simply transgressive. That’s why ops are covert … either they wouldn’t be tolerated by people of good faith … or they intend to run afoul of a targeted nation’s sovereignty and/or criminal justice system.
In the case of the GHF, the governments involved are perfectly fine with the illegal, the immoral and the transgressive aspects of their conduct inside the Gaza Strip. The President of the United States has openly advocated ethnic cleansing, which is a crime against humanity. He and his predecessor aided and abetted the wholesale slaughter of Gaza’s civilians. The dumb bombs they’ve provided have been dropped on homes, critical civilian infrastructure and hospitals—all violations of the Geneva Conventions. And those bombs have exterminated entire families, both nuclear and extended. Whole genetic lines … gone … summarily executed en masse.
As for Israel, Netanyahu crossed the threshold into genocide some time ago, and not only because he’s still using US-provided bombs to cull, terrorize and cripple Gaza’s population. Netanyahu’s incitement to commit genocide is on-record and fairly brazen, as are the incitements by members of his government. Those calls have been echoed by Israel’s media. When Netanyahu refers to Palestinians as “Amalek,” the Biblically-based message is clear to many, if not most, Israelis. God demanded the extermination of the Amalekites.
Similarly, a University of Pennsylvania survey found:
[W]hen asked directly whether they agreed with the position that the IDF, "when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?" nearly half, 47 percent, agreed.
Nearly half is more than enough to keep him in power and more than enough to press ahead with objectives that were clear to the shadowy people who turned food aid into death trap and, as it happens, into a potential cash cow.
Over the weekend, though, Reuters reported on yet another potential turn in GHF’s food aid scheme … a plan to transition from humanitarian aid distribution zones to “‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ inside - and possibly outside - Gaza”:
The $2 billion plan, created sometime after February 11 and carrying the name of the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, was submitted to the Trump administration, according to two sources, one of whom said it was recently discussed in the White House.
The plan, reviewed by Reuters, describes the camps as "large-scale" and "voluntary" places where the Gazan population could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
The Washington Post made a reference to GHF plans to build housing compounds, opens new tab for Palestinian non-combatants in May.
A slide deck seen by Reuters goes into granular detail on the "Humanitarian Transit Zones," including how they would be implemented and what they would cost.
It calls for using the sprawling facilities to "gain trust with the local population" and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump's "vision for Gaza."
Reuters could not independently determine the status of the plan, who created and submitted it, or whether it is still under consideration.
Of course, the GHF protested the story as “bad faith” propaganda and denied having anything to do with the plan. After first asserting that the GHF “proposed” the plan, Reuters did walk it back a bit and modulated their language to a plan “bearing the name of a controversial U.S.-backed aid group.”
Obviously, someone passed along the document. Maybe the intent was to smear the GHF … or maybe it was a trial balloon by someone in the White House … or it was genuine and the GHF engaged in another classic hallmark of a covert op—implausible deniability. - jp
TITLE: Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG
https://www.ft.com/content/0b1bc761-c572-4b61-882a-fb4467259dcd
EXCERPTS: The Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to develop a postwar Gaza plan that envisaged kick-starting the enclave’s economy with a “Trump Riviera” and an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”.
The plan outlined in a slide deck, seen by the Financial Times, was led by Israeli businessmen and used financial models developed inside Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to reimagine Gaza as a thriving trading hub.
Titled the “Great Trust” and shared with the Trump administration, it proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area and attracting private investors to develop Gaza.
While the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) did not author or endorse the final slide deck, two staff members at the former UK prime minister’s institute participated in message groups and calls as the project developed, according to people familiar with the work.
One lengthy document on postwar Gaza, written by a TBI staff member, was shared within the group for consideration. This included the idea of a “Gaza Riviera” with artificial islands off the coast akin to those in Dubai, blockchain-based trade initiatives, a deep water port to tie Gaza into the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor, and low-tax “special economic zones”.
The TBI document said the devastating war in Gaza had “created a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild Gaza from first principles . . . as a secure, modern prosperous society”.
While there was some overlap, the Israeli businessmen’s slide deck, which runs to more than 30 pages, differed significantly from the paper written by TBI’s staff. The institute’s document did not refer to the relocation of Palestinians, an idea championed by US President Donald Trump earlier this year but condemned internationally.
When first approached by the FT regarding its role in the project, a TBI spokesperson said: “Your story is categorically wrong . . . TBI was not involved in the preparation of the deck, which was a BCG deck, and had no input whatever into its contents.”
The FT then provided details of a 12-person message group used for the project — including two TBI staff, BCG consultants and the Israeli businessmen — and an unpublished TBI document shared within the group titled “Gaza Economic Blueprint”.
At this point, the TBI spokesperson said: “We have never said TBI knew nothing about what this group was working on or that they weren’t on calls in which the group discussed their plans.”
“TBI emphatically did not provide its own internal document for the purposes of the BCG work,” it added. TBI staff “saw” the slide deck but “didn’t create it”, the spokesperson said. “It would be wrong to suggest that we were working with this group to produce their Gaza plan.”
Phil Reilly, an ally of the businessmen who now runs security operations for GHF, courted Tony Blair at a meeting in London in March. TBI said that Reilly, a former CIA officer and BCG adviser, had requested the meeting. “Again, Mr Blair listened. But as you know, TBI is not part of GHF.” A spokesperson for Reilly’s Safe Reach Solutions said Blair’s office had requested the meeting to learn about the work his company did manning a checkpoint during a brief ceasefire in the war earlier this year.
The businessmen’s postwar blueprint imagined an expanded role for the aid operation, which would provide temporary housing to Palestinians who stayed in the territory, while cash payments and food and rent subsidies totalling $9,000 per head would encourage a quarter or more of the population to leave.
The final slide deck, titled “The Great Trust: From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally”, has been shared with members of the current and former US administrations, according to people familiar with the project, along with other governments and stakeholders in the Middle East. “Great” is short for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation.
It envisaged all Gaza’s public land being put into a trust for development, whose assets could be sold to investors via digital tokens traded on a blockchain. Gazans would be offered the chance to contribute their privately owned land to the trust in return for a token that gave them the right to a permanent housing unit.
The plan also envisages what the authors called the Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands, “world class resorts along the coastline and on small artificial islands similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai”. Such islands are also mentioned in the TBI document.
Using a complex financial model produced by the BCG team, the plan assumed 25 per cent of Gazans would leave voluntarily, a majority never to return.
TITLE: The spy, private equity baron and ghost of a Trump donor: The revolving door behind a Gaza mercenary firm
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-cia-spy-private-equity-baron-and-trump-donor-behind-mercenary-firm
EXCERPTS: The story of Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) exemplifies the shadowy revolving door between old spies and Middle Eastern states, one that is increasingly being monetized by American investors flush with cash.
SRS's creation mirrors that of dozens of private military firms that mushroomed after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the Middle East was awash with money for mercenaries. There are many layers to this lucrative world.
For two decades, former soldiers deployed to war zones like Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan with firms that won big US or foreign government contracts.
In some cases, these foot soldiers could earn $1,000 a day during deployments. In the social media age, their jobs are losing some of their shadowiness. SRS went on a LinkedIn recruiting spree earlier this year before deploying to Gaza, MEE revealed.
A level up are the former intelligence officers-cum-diplomats turned consultants who run the organisations. They oversee the ground troops and do the wheeling and dealing in Middle East capitals.
SRS is run by one with an enviable pedigree: Phil Reilly.
Reilly is a former CIA officer who trained Contra fighters in Nicaragua, deployed to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, and served as the CIA's deputy station chief in Baghdad.
He became a household name among Middle Eastern defence chiefs, serving as one of the key officials linking the CIA and the Department of Defence during the early days of the US's drone programme.
"The drone programme made Phil a famous guy in the region's right circles," one former CIA official told MEE.
Reilly himself was no stranger to bouncing around defence and intelligence companies hawking their services across the Middle East.
He was also bound to be known among allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his previous work as a director at Circinus, sources told MEE.
Reilly served on the firm's board. He joined in 2016, shortly after Circinus was acquired by Elliot Broidy, a one-time Trump donor and hawkish Jewish American supporter of Israel, according to public records.
During the first Trump administration, Broidy's Circinus was awarded contracts worth more than $200m to do defence work for the United Arab Emirates, according to The New York Times.
Broidy's firm was doing work for the tiny Gulf state during a time of unprecedented tensions with neighbouring Qatar.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced a blockade on Qatar, accusing it of supporting political Islamists who they said were a threat to their rule.
The Times reported that Broidy lobbied the Trump administration to take a hard line on Qatar. Broidy later sued the government of Qatar over an alleged hack of his records.
Broidy later pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests. He was pardoned by Trump in January 2021.
MEE repeatedly attempted to contact Broidy for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Reilly is not the only person in SRS linked to Circinus. MEE revealed last month Israeli filings that reveal SRS is supported by a slew of seasoned US government contractors.
Charles Africano, who is listed as an officer in the company, was also listed as a point of contact for Circinus until the page was taken down for maintenance after MEE's story was published last month.
Broidy has re-emerged as a vocal supporter of Israel since its war on Gaza began in October 2023.
He has rebranded his company, Circinus Worldwide. In an interview published on Medium in March 2025, he said the company was active in providing "services to the US government and in creating open source intelligence centers for US allies in the Middle East".
What makes SRS unique is that it includes a new layer to the military contracting world: American private equity firms.
Private equity firms proliferated in the era of low interest rates after the 2008 financial crisis. They raise money from wealthy families or institutional investors such as pension funds and purchase private companies with the goal of increasing their value through a combination of debt financing, mergers or cost-cutting. The end goal is to flip the companies at a profit.
Private equity firms have invested in everything from HVAC companies to restaurant chains and tech startups. A growing but niche trend is investing in defence companies. That is what McNally Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm, has been doing for years.
The firm was founded in 2008 by Ward McNally, the bespectacled and balding descendant of a family of Irish immigrants who made their money picking out far-flung spots on the map, literally.
The McNally publishing company began printing railroad guides in the booming late 19th-century American West.
By the mid-20th century, it was printing road maps and high school geography books. Over the last 15 years, McNally has parlayed his family’s publishing inheritance into a private equity fortune.
McNally has acquired stale but sturdy and solidly American companies, such as Jewett Automation, the Richmond, Virginia-based maker of automation systems. But it’s the defence and security companies that entice McNally.
"Ward inherited a lot of money and likes to do interesting things with it. He just likes this kind of dark arts, intelligence, James Bond stuff. It excites him," a colleague of McNally told MEE.
In late 2024, McNally invested in Quiet Professionals, a firm specialising in cloud-based, open-source intelligence collection and cybersecurity. It is a lucrative business. The firm recently secured a $64.7m contract with the US Marine Corps.
In 2021, McNally acquired Orbis, a firm providing intelligence and national security advisory services. It also taps a burgeoning market in AI analysis, but Orbis also offers advisory and consulting services. It has a history of work in the Middle East. Mike Morrell, a former deputy director of the CIA, is chairman of the board of directors.
McNally, according to multiple sources who spoke with MEE, thought that Orbis would be the perfect company to send American mercenaries to the Gaza Strip. It was here that McNally met Reilly, a senior vice president at Orbis.
Reilly started working on a study to outsource aid delivery to private companies and foundations while at Orbis in late 2024. McNally got wind of the plan and was all on board. "He said there were gobs of money to be made," the associate of McNally told MEE.
But Orbis wanted nothing to do with the project, multiple sources told MEE. In the end, McNally and Reilly created a different company on their own to funnel American mercenaries to the Gaza Strip to guard aid centres.
Last month, Reuters cited a McNally spokesperson saying the company helped "support the establishment" of SRS.
The State Department has approved $30m in funding for GHF, which reportedly projects that it will have a $150m monthly budget once it is up and running, totalling $1.8bn a year.
Meanwhile, Israel’s war on Gaza continues.
TITLE: 'Blood for food': The US soldier-spies sidelining UN aid work in Gaza
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250703-blood-for-food-us-soldier-spies-sidelining-un-aid-work-gaza-ghf-safe-reach
EXCERPTS: Safe Reach first began operating in late January, leading a vehicle inspection checkpoint effort along the Netzarim Corridor splitting northern and southern Gaza with another private security contractor, UG Solutions.
Both companies have been urgently recruiting former intelligence officers and special forces veterans to run their Gaza operations.
The sole American director of Safe Reach’s Israeli branch is the financial officer Charles J. Africano.
Africano and Reilly have overlapped professionally for years, including circa 2015 at Constellis – a successor to the private military contractor Blackwater that gained notoriety for a civilian massacre in Iraq – and then at the similarly controversial private security and surveillance firm Circinus. Africano’s connections with GHF were first highlighted by Middle East Eye and independently confirmed from public records by FRANCE 24.
Africano is also a member of the private LinkedIn group of the Tampa-based special operations contractor Quiet Professionals, which was acquired last month by McNally and is led by former Delta Force sergeant major Andy Wilson.
When reached for comment regarding its relationship with Quiet Professionals, GHF responded with a refusal to discuss its financial relationships, stating, “Like most non-profits, we don't disclose our donors to protect their privacy.”
Both Orbis Operations and Quiet Professionals were acquired by McNally in partnership with NIO Advisors, the Illinois-based strategic advisory firm of investor Christopher J. Oates, who was recently revealed through public records to have helped establish the Israeli branch of Safe Reach Solutions.
The chief business officer of Quiet Professionals, Leo Kryszewski, has also publicly disclosed spending four years with the CIA’s special activities division and the US Army's Office of Military Support, a secretive intelligence unit often referred to as Task Force Orange. Africano was publicly credited with setting up the first bank account of the task force’s de facto non-profit arm.
Public US military procurement records have revealed that Quiet Professionals is providing its Cerebra Gray data analytics platform to the Army’s Fort Huachuca in Arizona to train covert operatives in evading foreign counterintelligence services, including through hiding and remotely wiping cellphone data.
Orbis and Quiet Professionals did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for comment.
Despite the UN’s serious misgivings about the high rate of civilian casualties among Gazans trying to access GHF aid hubs, the US State Department on Thursday afternoon announced its approval of a $30 million grant for the new organisation through the recently gutted USAID.
Leaked documents obtained by FRANCE 24 from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs (BHA) include GHF’s “Technical Narrative” proposal and an automated message from BHA’s award management system, Abacus, stating that the GHF funding relates to a “high-priority” White House directive.
An employee of what remains of BHA, who requested anonymity, stated that GHF’s application for funding fell “well below our normal technical standards for funding". “Additional funds were added to the Gaza project for a [White House] high-priority directive,” they added.
Josh Paul, a former director of public affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said the new foundation’s lack of transparency leaves it wide open to abuses.
“I cannot recall a time during my service in government in which the US contributed half a billion dollars to an entity as new, opaque and questionable as the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation',” he said, referring to reports earlier this month that the State Department was considering a $500 million grant for GHF.
“Not only has this mechanism proven to be deeply flawed – indeed, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians through its operations – but its formation through a series of shell companies and interweaving personalities and organisations creates the significant risk of diversion of funds and corruption,” Paul said. “There is a significant likelihood that much of these funds, rather than buying food for starving people in Gaza, will be lost to waste, abuse and fraud."
The US State Department did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for comment.