‘Height of hypocrisy,’ State Dept says of resistance from UN, NGOs, who ‘feel left out’ on aid delivery

Tammy Bruce, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, told reporters at the department’s daily press briefing on Tuesday that there is “great news to report out of Gaza.”

Echoing numbers that the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation released earlier in the day, Bruce said that about 8,000 boxes of food—each of which feeds about 5.5 people for 3.5 days—had been distributed, for a total of 462,000 meals.

Bruce was asked about “apparently some incident or incidents today involving potentially shots being, or at least warning shots being fired and hundreds of civilians.”

“Well, yes, Hamas still has weapons. Hamas is in a situation here where all of this could have stopped, of course, if they had released the hostages and put down their weapons, but they refuse to do so,” she said. “They’ve also rejected ceasefires.”

“Without confirming what might be gossip or single reports, the fact of the matter is Hamas has been opposed to this dynamic,” Bruce said. “They have attempted to stop the aid movement through Gaza to these distribution centers. They have failed, but they certainly tried.”

The real story, to the State Department spokeswoman, is that “aid is moving through, and in that kind of an environment, it’s not surprising that there might be a few issues involved.”

“The good news is that those seeking to get aid to the people of Gaza, which is not Hamas, have succeeded,” she said.

A reporter suggested that the Trump administration is “not particularly happy with the position that the United Nations and its agencies have taken with regard to these shipments.”

“From the very beginning, we had mentioned and we had heard about the resistance by certain NGOs and the United Nations,” Bruce said. “It is unfortunate because the issue here is getting aid to Gazans, and then suddenly it moves into complaints about style or the nature of who’s doing it or elements of administration.”

“Being opposed to getting food and aid, as we have demonstrated here is happening and will continue to happen, because someone might feel left out is, I think, the height of hypocrisy,” she said.

©JNS