Anti-Israel Sen. Chris van Hollen’s (D-MD) star witness against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Tony Aguilar, tried to hold onto his job with the group while threatening to destroy its reputation if it refused.
Van Hollen, who has used fake news before in his attempts to demonize and isolate Israel, interviewed Aguilar, apparently in the Senator’s Capitol Hill office, on Tuesday, publicizing Aguilar’s accusations against GHF, which has distributed nearly 100 million meals in Gaza, where other organizations have failed.
Aguilar, a former contractor with UG solutions, which works with GHF, told the left-wing agitprop publication Democracy Now!, that “he saw U.S. mercenaries and Israeli forces commit war crimes by indiscriminately shooting at starving Palestinians waiting for aid.” This repeated a widely debunked media hoax.
Van Hollen, naturally, took an interest in the story.
But attorney David Panzer told a press briefing Tuesday that Aguilar had taken an entirely different tone after he was “terminated for misconduct.”
Panzer said, in an accompanying statement:
Mr. Aguilar was very enthusiastic about his work with UG Solutions. His claims that he raised about GHF operations to his superiors are false.
Fact: There are many text messages from Mr. Aguilar praising the work he was doing in Gaza, delivering and distributing humanitarian aid to a starving and displaced population. We’ll be projecting many of these up on the screen.
On May 28, Mr. Aguilar distributed a signal message praising UG Solutions. And he said, “Delivering and distributing 318.3 tons of humanitarian aid to a starving and displaced population wrote sentiment in the media, despite whatever people may think about the politics of the situation, your presence, meaning UG’s presence, GHF’s presence, is seen as a good thing.”
On the same day, Mr. Aguilar wrote to UG Solutions’s leadership: “This is a very rewarding mission. I’m excited every day.”
These are the relevant times during which Mr. Aguilar was claiming to have sent a memo to the company raising issues. On May 31 he shared a similar sentiment with his colleagues, and he wrote to them, “Be proud, be humble. You are making a difference in the future of this region and geopolitics around the globe. That’s something to hang your hat on at the end of a hard week.”
On June 10, Mr. Aguilar sent another message, this time with a picture of a young girl carrying a bag of aid. He wrote, “Hungry, tired, filthy, with a smile on her face. How? Why? Because you’ve given her hope for tomorrow, hope that things will improve, life will get better, a feeling she likely has not known in a long time. You’re making a difference every day, every hour, every minute.”
That’s how he was describing the work of these contractors at the time.But while Mr. Aguilar praised UG’s success, the company became concerned with his substandard performance and his repeated workplace conflicts.
After Aguilar was fired for “fail[ing] to perform basic tasks that were his responsibility,” Panzer said, he threatened the company to rehire him, or else he would be GHF’s “worst nightmare.”
Panzer said that Aguilar also fabricated memoranda and other so-called “evidence.” He urged media outlets to perform due diligence on his claims before repeating them.
Hamas and the “international aid community” are desperate to end GHF’s operations, which threaten the United Nations’ role in Gaza, and the terrorist organization’s control over humanitarian aid supply in the territory.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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