A new investigation by The Daily Wire has cast doubt on a story shared by a former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) contractor who claimed that IDF soldiers killed a child receiving aid at a GHF site.
Anthony Aguilar, told the UnXeptable podcast last month that he met a boy named “Amir” while working at an aid distribution site operated by the US firm on May 28.
He claimed that, after sharing a conversation and an embrace with Amir, the boy got lost in the crowd and was subsequently shot and killed by the IDF.
“He puts out his hand, and so I beckoned him to come to me. I said, ‘Come here'. And he reaches out and he holds my hand, and he kisses my hand and he says, ‘Shukran [Thank you],'” Aguilar claimed.
But he said their interaction was cut short by “pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and bullets”.
He also claimed that, as the crowd fled the site, he heard machine gun fire, adding: “They’re shooting to control the population that’s along the Morag Corridor. And as they’re doing that, they’re shooting into this crowd, … and Palestinians, civilians, human beings, are dropping to the ground, getting shot
"And Amir was one of them. Amir walked 12km to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it and died.”
However, in a video obtained by The Daily Wire, Siham Al-Jarabe’a - a woman claiming to be the child’s stepmother - told an Arabic interviewer on August 5 that the boy, whom she identified as Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hamdan Al-Jarabe’a, was alive and lived with her until he went missing on July 28 - two months after his supposed death.
Additionally, a review of body cam footage from an American security contractor standing next to Aguilar on the day of the alleged incident apparently showed a different version of the encounter.
The security contractor claimed in an interview with The Daily Wire that the hand shown in the footage was his own, not Aguilar's.
Aguilar, who claimed to have resigned from his post, was fired by the organisation on June 13 “due to poor performance, volatile conflicts with staff and erratic behaviour,” according to a spokesperson for the foundation.
The firm has previously claimed that he “falsified documents” to spread “false narrative” of IDF shootings. Aguilar has denied these claims.
Both the GHF and the IDF stated there were no reports of an incident involving Israeli military fire on civilians at any GHF distribution site on May 28.
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