They call themselves crusaders and arrange barbecue parties with pork to "defy" the Muslim fasting month. At least ten members of the American motorcycle gang Infidels have been employed to handle security at the American-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) aid centers in the Gaza Strip, a review by BBC shows.
Seven of them have leading roles in the operation where thousands of Palestinians have queued for limited food deliveries – and where over a thousand, according to the UN, have been shot dead in connection with the distribution sites.
"Like KKK in Sudan"
Infidels members work for the private security company UG Solutions, which has been hired by GHF to place armed guards where aid is to be distributed.
The motorcycle gang was founded in the US by war veterans who were stationed in Iraq. Members wear leather vests with crosses on their backs and call themselves crusaders. The organization's channels are permeated by hate and agitation directed at Muslims.
Letting the motorcycle club Infidels handle the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza is like letting the Ku Klux Klan handle humanitarian aid in Sudan. It's completely incomprehensible, says Edward Ahmed Mitchell at the civil rights organization Council on American-Islamic Relations to BBC.
Crusade romanticism
Of the ten Infidels members that BBC has been able to identify in UG Solutions' Gaza forces, several have been convicted of crimes in recent years or been subject to military legal action.
Several of them, including a former army sergeant who is titled group leader for the work in Gaza, have numerous tattoos with crusade motifs. The symbols and messages are often repeated in right-wing extremist circles to agitate in an alleged confrontation with Islam in general.
Pictures posted by those involved on social media show militarily uniformed men posing with messages like "Make Gaza Great Again". One sells t-shirts with the text "Surf all day, rockets all night – Gaza summer 25".
UG Solutions tells BBC that its employees are qualified for the task and that they do not take "private interests or connections" into account.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been handling the distribution of food that the outside world is trying to send to the increasingly starving population of the Gaza Strip since the end of May this year.
The organization was formed by Israel and the US, after Israel had previously during the war stopped all UN-led aid efforts in Gaza. In May, Israel had had Gaza under a total blockade for over two months.
The food has been distributed in limited quantities and under militarized forms at special locations in southern Gaza where Palestinians have flocked and queued. There have been regular outbreaks of turmoil that have escalated into deadly violence, with reports of indiscriminate shooting and suspected war crimes.
Between May 27 and September 2, more than 2,100 people, mostly young men and boys, have been killed when they sought out aid deliveries in Gaza, according to the UN's humanitarian coordination office Ocha. More than 1,100 of them have been killed at or in connection with GHF's distribution sites.
