At the United Nations on Wednesday, the wall-to-wall condemnations of Israel contradicted one of the most significant developments in the 600-day Mideast war: an American-backed effort to feed Gazans independently of Hamas.

Depriving Hamas of one of its top sources of income — selling confiscated foreign aid to Gazans at exorbitant prices — could end the terror organization’s hold over the Strip’s population and hasten the end of the war, Israelis say. 

Yet, the UN, in what the spokeswoman for the Department of State, Tammy Bruce, describes as “the height of hypocrisy,” opposes a Washington-backed effort to distribute aid in southern Gaza that bypasses Hamas. 

Speaking at the Security Council Wednesday, the Israeli UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said the world body is “actively joining Hamas in trying to block that aid.” The UN, he said, “is using threats, intimidation and retaliation against NGOs that choose to participate in the new humanitarian mechanism.”

Mr. Danon also pointed to the “mafia-like” methods of the UN, including removing the names of nongovernmental organizations that take part in the American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s efforts from a database that tracks deliveries to Gaza.    

Israel is hoping that depriving Hamas of the finances it derives from aid confiscation would complement its intensifying military campaign. On Wednesday Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed to the Knesset that the Hamas Gaza chief, Mohammed Sinwar, has been killed. The previous Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, was killed earlier in the war. The two brothers were the architects of the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities. 

Mohammed Sinwar and 10 other top Hamas leaders were killed in an Israeli air bombing on March 21 at their lair underneath the European hospital in southern Gaza. The bombing was widely condemned at the time. Hamas and its sympathisers vehemently deny that hospitals, schools, and mosques are used as military installations.

“I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza,” a California-based volunteer physician, Feroze Sidhwa, told the UN Security Council Wednesday. He was invited to address a monthly council debate on the “Mideast and the Palestinian question.”

Almost all speakers at the session condemned Israel for denying aid to Gazans. Slovenia, France, and others called on the council to pass a resolution that would demand an “immediate and unconditional lifting” of alleged Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries.

“Will you act now — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?” the UN humanitarian coordinator, Tom Fletcher, demanded of the council. Last week, Mr. Fletcher was forced to retract his claim that 14,000 Gaza babies would be starved to death within 48 hours. This week he said, incredibly, that Israel is blocking 10,000 trucks from entering Gaza. 

“He should be more responsible when he puts out these statements,” Mr. Danon told reporters. The ambassador insisted there is no competition between the new American-backed aid distribution mechanism and the UN’s efforts. According to the Israel Defense Force, though, more than 400 trucks inside Gaza await the UN for pickup and distribution. “The majority contain food that can get ruined in the sun,” the IDF coordinator unit, known as COGAT, writes on X.  

The Washington-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operating two aid distribution centers, where parameters are secured by the IDF, on Tuesday. Hamas erected roadblocks to stop civilians from reaching the southern Gaza centers. Hungry civilians swarmed the Hamas barriers in chaotic scenes that were quickly blamed on Israel.

Hamas flooded social networks with videos of the chaos, leading the UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, to declare them “heartbreaking.” The GHF, though, said it eventually controlled the chaos with no casualties. Some 840,262 meals were handed over to civilians, its spokesman said. 

Hamas is urging further chaos. “We expect our great people to thwart the method of receiving aid today, just as they thwarted it yesterday,” a Lebanon-based Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said Wednesday. “We trust that our people will endure hunger and not extend their hands to the occupier asking for aid!” 

While the UN and its supporters insist that when it monopolizes distribution no aid is confiscated by Hamas, hundreds of needy civilians broke into a central Gaza Hamas food-storage warehouse Wednesday. Five people were shot dead as Hamas gunmen defended the looted aid, YNet reports. 

While Gazans shed their fear of Hamas, the UN insists it alone can distribute aid. “The privatization of aid and the weaponization of aid is a very dangerous precedent,” the secretary-general’s Mideast envoy, Sigrid Kaag, told reporters Wednesday. She responded to a question about “mercenary” aid workers of the American-backed GHF. 

“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,” the state department’s Ms. Bruce said Tuesday.