I. The Crusade Returns
In the summer of 2025, aid in Gaza no longer looks like aid. At key distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), armed American contractors from UG Solutions stand behind fortified barriers, wielding M4 rifles, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters. Crowds of desperate Palestinians surge forward, children collapse from dehydration amid the chaos, and UNICEF has reported over 200 malnourished minors separated in the fray. And before each shift, groups of ex-military personnel from Sentinel Foundation kneel in formation, invoking "spiritual warfare" prayers for victory over "demonic chaos." This is spiritual warfare, and Gaza is the battlefield.
One of the most active outfits in this system is the Sentinel Foundation, led by Matthew Murphy. On Instagram, he praises Hitler as a “devout Christian” who fought “communist Jews with usury” and built a “debt-free economy.” On podcasts, he calls Islam a slave ideology that promotes “beheading and raping.” On the ground in Gaza, his organization facilitates logistics, moving 100,000 water bottles through checkpoints, evacuating 65 Americans, and assisting in crowd control alongside GHF and UG Solutions, according to their Q1 2025 SITREP.
This is not humanitarianism. It is a crusade dressed in contractor gear, evangelical, militarized, and increasingly entangled with U.S. intelligence infrastructure. Figures like Murphy, “former” CIA officer Philip Reilly (SRS CEO, with Mossad consultations on aid routes), and ex-Green Beret Jameson Govoni (UG Solutions CEO, facing scrutiny over an April 2025 hit-and-run) now dominate the aid environment in Gaza. Their operations are guided as much by ideology as by strategy, blending faith, firepower, and foreign policy under the guise of relief.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has described Gaza’s aid zones as “humanitarian camouflage” and a “tactic of this genocide,” where food is dangled in front of starving families under deadly Israeli fire amid over 1,000 deaths near sites since May. But the deeper story is darker. Behind the checkpoints and biometric scanners is a growing network of ex-soldiers and evangelical operatives who believe they are fighting a holy war. Gaza, for them, is not just a mission. It is a proving ground.
This report examines how faith-based extremism, military privatization, and intelligence-linked trafficking narratives are converging into something new: a weaponized theology of aid. What began as “help” is fast becoming something else entirely, a gospel delivered at gunpoint.
II. A New Breed of Mercenary. Meet the Crusaders.
If Gaza has become a battleground for the soul, its enforcers are not traditional soldiers. They are a hybrid class of ex-intelligence operatives, private contractors, and evangelical ideologues, men who see no contradiction between the rifle and the Bible, and who describe their missions in Gaza as acts of spiritual warfare.
Together, they form an ecosystem of privatized militarism and messianic belief. And whether distributing aid, guarding checkpoints, or “rescuing” children, they operate under the conviction that they are not merely enforcing order they believe they are fighting evil.
Matthew Murphy: The Crusader as Prophet
At the center is Matthew Murphy, president of the Sentinel Foundation. Formerly a founder of Operation Light Shine (OLS), a Nashville-based anti-trafficking group funded by the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Task Force, Murphy now oversees “crisis response” operations that blur the lines between humanitarian relief, tactical extraction, and militarized evangelism.
Founded in 2020 after the tragic 2013 death of his sister Sarah Vinick, officially ruled an accidental drug overdose but believed by Murphy to be the result of human trafficking, OLS under Murphy received $4.5 million in federal funding to support INTERCEPT task forces, law enforcement raids, and awareness campaigns like the 'Ending Human Trafficking' podcast. Murphy calls himself a “CIA detailee” who previously led “manhunting” operations in Africa, as detailed in his 2024 podcast appearance on 'The Ed Clay Show.' Painting his missions in this light suggests coordination with US intelligence agencies. But his public persona veers from covert into crusading: on social media, he posts tributes to Adolf Hitler, and dismisses Palestine as a “shit hole” populated by “nomads and unwanted people.” In podcasts, he describes Islam as an inherently violent religion and warns of “demonic” forces operating through Palestinian resistance.
This isn’t fringe rhetoric, it’s central to how Murphy frames his work. Sentinel’s mission is steeped in the language of “rescue,” “deliverance,” and spiritual warfare. In December 2024, Murphy appeared at the “My Brother’s Keeper” summit in Nashville, an event that fused tactical training with evangelical preaching. The summit, co-hosted by ex-military and spiritual warfare leaders, framed humanitarian and security work as a divine mandate. Its themes, including masculinity, faith, and spiritual battle, offer a glimpse into the militant theology driving Sentinel’s posture in Gaza. (A fuller account of the summit and its ideology appears in Section 3.)
Jameson Govoni: The Missionary CEO
If Murphy is the preacher-warrior, Jameson Govoni is the businessman-missionary. A former Green Beret with 11 years in the 5th Special Forces Group, an elite Army unit headquartered at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, specializing in unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, direct action, counter-insurgency, special reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, and security force assistance across the Middle East and Central Asia. Govoni is also co-founder of Sentinel, and now serves as CEO of UG Solutions, the contractor firm currently tasked with guarding Gaza aid distribution sites run by the GHF.
During his service, Govoni deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia, where 5th SFG missions often involved training local forces, collecting intelligence, waging secret operations behind enemy lines, and conducting mounted warfare. In Afghanistan (as part of Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001 onward), his unit was the first deployed, partnering with Afghan militias to topple Taliban strongholds and secure key sites. In Iraq, teams like Govoni's secured southern areas ahead of conventional forces, focusing on counter-insurgency and foreign internal defense. In Colombia, operations likely centered on anti-narco partnerships, advising local military against insurgent groups—experiences that honed his skills in high-threat environments and laid the groundwork for privatized security work. Govoni presents his work as service to the vulnerable, a kind of holy protection. “We go where others won’t—to rescue and protect,” he wrote in a May 2025 post following backlash over civilian deaths outside a GHF site. His biography is filled with evangelical partnerships, including joint missions with Operation Light Shine and trauma recovery programs based in scripture. UG offers "faith-centered security courses" that blend Christian witness with hostile-zone engagement, framing ops as a divine calling.
But his operations are anything but benign. UG personnel have been implicated in multiple crowd-control incidents at GHF aid sites, including fatal shootings and drone dispersal tactics. Hired alongside SRS to secure checkpoints like Netzarim, recruiting over 100 ex-military for vehicle inspections, UG has faced scrutiny for violence, with reports of guards firing live ammo amid chaos. The firm hired crisis PR firm Seven Letter amid mounting criticism. Seven Letter, famously has ties to the Obama and Biden administrations.
Govoni’s previous ventures include a hangover supplement company called Alcohol Armor, which once hosted a David Guetta concert, and a counter-trafficking nonprofit. His self-description as a “degenerate from Boston” who joined the military to “inflict pain” only deepened concerns about his suitability for aid work. (Govoni is discussed more thoroughly in our previous article.)
In April 2025, Govoni was involved in a hit-and-run incident outside a faith-based charity event in Georgia, an episode that raised questions about his stability and judgment, but ultimately did not derail his expanding contracts in Gaza. Court records state that after the crash, Govoni defied police orders to stop and attempted to flee at speeds prosecutors called “reckless and irresponsible.” He was later arrested at his residence. UG Solutions declined to comment on the incident or clarify whether the bond would affect Govoni’s ability to travel internationally.
Post-military, Govoni's Sentinel Foundation conducted ops in Ukraine starting in 2022, evacuating refugees like the Pavelchuk family to Poland amid Russia's invasion, to prevent trafficking vulnerabilities. Govoni noted: “You have millions of people that are right for trafficking... so we absolutely try to get ahead of it.” This built networks that extended to high-level politics, including thanks to Senators Lindsey “To the last Ukrainian” Graham and Markwayne Mullin for supporting 2023 Gaza evacuations, with a photo showing Govoni alongside Graham. Graham's strong Ukraine ties including multiple Kiev visits (7+ since 2014!), co-sponsoring $95B in aid in 2024, advocating arming Ukraine against Russia, calling it a "strategic investment," mirror his pro-Israel stance, potentially facilitating Govoni's pivot from Ukraine humanitarian work to Gaza militarized aid.
Together with Murphy, Govoni forms a direct bridge between the ideological mission and the security muscle that enforces it.
Philip Reilly (aka Philip Raleigh): The Architect
Then there’s Philip Reilly, a career CIA officer and former head of the Special Activities Center—Langley’s paramilitary arm. Under the alias Philip Raleigh, Reilly now serves as the CEO of Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), which by May 2025 had taken over more than 70% of aid logistics and convoy management in Gaza.
With 29 years in the CIA's National Clandestine Service (NCS), Reilly retired in 2020 as a Senior Intelligence Service Officer. His career focused on paramilitary and covert ops, including serving as Deputy Chief of Team Jawbreaker, the first CIA team deployed to Afghanistan post-9/11 in 2001, where he coordinated with Northern Alliance forces for regime change against the Taliban, facilitating airstrikes and reconnaissance that toppled key cities like Mazar-i-Sharif. Earlier, in the 1980s, he trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels as part of U.S. efforts to undermine the Sandinista government, a covert operation tied to the Iran-Contra scandal. As Chief of the Special Activities Center (SAC) in the 2010s, Reilly oversaw the CIA's most secretive paramilitary branch, directing drone strike programs in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan (causing civilian casualties), targeted assassinations (coordinated with JSOC, like the 2011 bin Laden raid), extraordinary renditions to black sites for enhanced interrogation (read: torture), and regime-change ops like arming Syrian rebels against Assad, activities criticized for human rights violations, lack of oversight, and blowback like empowering extremists.
Where Murphy and Govoni operate publicly, Reilly prefers to lurk in the shadows. But his fingerprints are everywhere. He reportedly co-developed the GHF model alongside Israeli intelligence in 2024, long before the organization’s formal launch. According to reporting from Intelligence Online, SRS consults directly with Israeli military officials on aid site placement, convoy routes, and crowd control techniques. A Ynetnews report reveals SRS is also conducting intelligence operations in Gaza, operating roadblocks and processing data from cameras, drones, and satellites to identify Hamas operatives, blending aid with military-intel tasks." SRS is owned by the Wyoming-based 2 Ocean Trust, a generational wealth management firm that provides additional opacity to its operations and funding, as revealed in investigations by The Washington Post.
Reilly’s network of contractors includes former Delta Force operatives like Glenn Devitt, who also co-founded Sentinel with Murphy. That overlap is no coincidence, it’s a revolving door of special operations veterans and intelligence personnel, most of whom share not just military backgrounds, but evangelical convictions. He also advises tech firms like Boston Consulting Group (on Gaza aid outsourcing), Orbis Operations (Senior VP, for intel/surveillance tech), and Garrison Technology (cybersecurity for high-threat environments). He previously served as an adviser to Circinus, the security firm, as well as to Elliott Broidy, the former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and a close Trump ally. He later worked for the cybersecurity firm 2020Partners alongside former Obama-era Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
From black sites to biometric aid checkpoints, Reilly has spent his career engineering systems of control only now, the battlefield is humanitarian, and the mission cloaked in the language of salvation.
Johnnie Moore: The Spiritual Chairman
Though not an operator, Reverend Johnnie Moore’s recent elevation to Executive Chairman of GHF completes the ideological transformation of Gaza’s aid regime. A former Trump religious advisor and prominent Christian Zionist, Moore is deeply connected to both U.S. evangelical political networks and Israeli lobby circles.
Born in 1983, Moore rose through the ranks as an evangelical pastor and publicist, founding the PR firm JDA Worldwide and serving as Vice President of Liberty University from 2013-2016. Liberty, a private evangelical university in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. in 1971 as a conservative Christian stronghold. The institution has long been central to the religious right, with Falwell’s Moral Majority movement shaping U.S. politics. In recent years, the university has been engulfed in scandal, including the 2020 resignation of Jerry Falwell Jr. amid a sex and corruption scandal and a $15 million settlement finalized in May 2025. Throughout, Liberty remained a pipeline for radical evangelical politics and pro-Trump activism.
Moore served on Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board (2016–2020), alongside Paula White and Jerry Falwell Jr., and was a was US Commissioner on International Religious Freedom from 2018 to 2024. He authored books like Defying ISIS and The Next Jihad, and frequently speaks about persecuted Christians in the Middle East. He has met multiple times with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and describes Israel as “God’s prophetic promise fulfilled.”
Above video: Evangelical pastor Paula White, Trump’s former spiritual advisor, calls on “angels from Africa” and warns of “demonic confederacies” during a November 2020 prayer session meant to overturn Trump’s election loss. Her rhetoric illustrates the spiritual warfare ideology shaping figures like Moore, Murphy, and other contractors operating in Gaza.
His appointment followed the resignation of GHF’s first director, Jake Wood, and the brief interim leadership of John Acree of USAID. Under Moore’s leadership, the facade of humanitarian neutrality collapsed entirely. He openly describes Gaza as a land plagued by evil, calls the aid effort a “mission for biblical justice,” and praises the Israeli military for its “surgical righteousness.”
Moore's ideology is rooted in Christian Zionism, viewing Israel as biblical fulfillment and Palestinians/Hamas as existential threats. Critics argue this weaponizes theology for occupation, with Common Dreams labeling it 'theology that kills.' He dismisses Gaza hunger as 'Hamas disinformation' and defends GHF amid 1,000+ deaths at sites, boasting '91 million meals' in interviews like his July 2 Times of Israel appearance. Moore’s role is strategic rather than operational but he is the one giving theological cover to the bullets and biometric checkpoints. And in this network, theology is not an afterthought. It’s the blueprint.
III. The Doctrine of Deliverance.
To understand the actors shaping Gaza’s militarized aid regime, it’s not enough to examine their resumes. One must enter their cosmology. Within the worldview of men like Matthew Murphy, Jameson Govoni, and Johnnie Moore, Gaza is not just a war zone, it’s a battlefield between divine order and demonic chaos. Their rhetoric makes this clear: spiritual warfare is not metaphor, but mission, a worldview in which enemies are agents of darkness and violence is sanctified as holy.
Doctrine in Uniform
In Gaza’s militarized aid zones, theology is not a footnote it is the operating manual. Spiritual warfare, a belief that human conflict reflects a cosmic struggle between good and evil, increasingly shapes how American contractors interpret their mission. Under this doctrine, Palestinians are not civilians in crisis; they are vessels of demonic influence, caught in a war between heaven and hell.
This ideology draws from a broader evangelical tradition popularized by figures like C. Peter Wagner, whose “apostolic warfare” model taught believers to map physical regions as spiritual battlegrounds infested with demonic strongholds. In his 1989 book Prayer Shield, Wagner described pastors, military leaders, and politicians as targets in a global spiritual war, requiring constant intercessory protection via prayer and militant vigilance. This theology now guides Murphy and his peers. They aren’t just evacuating children or guarding aid convoys, they believe they are purging Gaza of evil, a mission rooted in scriptures like Deuteronomy 20:16-18, which calls for destroying “wicked” cultures.
One event in particular reveals how this worldview has crystallized. On December 11, 2024, over 50 ex-military and faith leaders gathered at 301 Rosa L. Parks Avenue in Nashville for the “My Brother’s Keeper” summit. Promoted through Murphy’s social media with stark World War II battle footage, the summit blended tactical drills with spiritual warfare theology. Speakers included exorcism preacher Dr. Michael Cocchini (The War Within) and former Navy SEAL Neil Dyer who teaches ‘Warriors Rise,’ a course focused on eradicating what he calls ‘weak, effeminate Christians.” The agenda featured 5-6 hours of filmed discussions led by speakers like Stephen Prouse (The Fourth Watch/Fifth Horseman Ministries), Byron Rodgers (Protector Nation tactical training), and Cody Cohen (Genesis Arms firearms). The names themselves are revealing, evoking both religious and military force. These are not metaphors, this is the language of militant faith.
Topics included biblical masculinity, human trafficking, spiritual warfare, and the role of the Church in reclaiming a fallen world. The event concluded with Holy Spirit-led prayer, personal testimonies, and a “Covenant of Warriors,” a signed pledge to fight evil globally. Fourth Watch Ministries later posted on X: “A divine call to arms,” that account no longer exists.
This wasn’t abstract theology. In Gaza, the same men are now directing drone surveillance, managing biometric checkpoints, and securing distribution sites where over 1,000 civilians have died since May. Contractors reportedly pray over scanning equipment and cite scripture before engaging in armed operations. The fusion of religious mission and paramilitary force has transformed humanitarian aid into a crusade, one where casualties are not just tolerated but spiritualized.
Pre-Shift Prayers and Battle Psalms
This militant theology finds its most tangible expression on the ground in Gaza, where contractors transform aid sites into arenas of spiritual combat. Multiple sources, including interviews and leaked communications, describe pre-shift “huddles” where guards recite Bible verses, pray for protection, and invoke spiritual authority over the territory. A leaked Sentinel Foundation training video, urges staff to “see the battlefield through a spiritual lens,” warning that “Hamas is not just a terrorist force, it is animated by a demonic ideology that hates the light.”
Contractors cite scriptures like Psalms 144:1, “Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war.” Contractors cite this verse as they prepare for operations and blend divine sanction with tactical readiness. This ritualistic fervor shapes their perception of the population. Palestinians approaching GHF checkpoints are often seen not as desperate civilians, but as potential threats to a sacred mission. The Associated Press detailed guards firing live ammo and stun grenades amid chaos, with anonymous contractors admitting to aggressive tactics that align with a worldview where casualties advance a divine agenda. Armed contractors, emboldened by scripture, enforce perimeters not just for security, but as a holy purge, turning aid into a battlefield where every casualty advances a divine agenda.
Language as Weapon
In public briefings, internal reports, and social media posts, the rhetoric of “rescue,” “deliverance,” and “cleansing” appears again and again. Sentinel and UG Solutions refer to their activities in Gaza not as aid work, but as “protective extractions,” “crisis interdictions,” or “civilian salvation logistics.” Murphy’s conference remarks refer to his mission as a warning against “principalities in Gaza,” framing it as a fight against demonic forces. This is not the language of humanitarian neutrality, it is language that dehumanizes, that reduces the population to a moral threat, and that sanctifies any level of violence required to “purge” it.
This framework also blurs lines between tactical action and theological judgment. In one internal training, a Sentinel instructor warned, “We are not just enforcing order, we are confronting the enemies of God. If you hesitate, you let evil in.”
Prominent American pastors like John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), reinforce this theology on national television. In an October 2023 appearance on Fox News, Hagee declared that God granted the land of Israel to the descendants of Abraham “forever and forever,” adding that those who deny this “do not believe in the God of heaven.” This message, echoed across pulpits and policy circles, reduces the question of Palestinian land rights to a theological trespass, not a political injustice. It is this worldview that quietly underwrites the actions of contractors on the ground: a belief that Gaza is not just occupied territory, but stolen divine inheritance, ripe for violent redemption.
The Gaza Mission as Holy War
This is the ideological terrain in which Gaza’s militarized aid regime operates. For many of its leading figures, the enemy is not just Hamas or instability, it is spiritual evil. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the war as one between “sons of light and sons of darkness,” language rooted in apocalyptic scripture and echoed in contractor briefings and training events. The language of humanitarianism is hollowed out and repurposed, replaced with the vocabulary of crusade: “deliverance,” “spiritual strongholds,” “principalities of darkness.”
This framework is no longer confined to fringe church groups. It has crept into the logistics, security protocols, and public rhetoric of organizations like Sentinel Foundation and Safe Reach Solutions. Contractors publicly speak of “praying over drones,” invoke Bible verses in interviews, and share media portraying Gaza as a battlefield between light and darkness. Their Instagram reels and podcasts blend combat footage with revivalist sermons. At training events like My Brother’s Keeper, “warfare” is as much spiritual as tactical.
Such narratives create the conditions for violence to be perceived not as failure or excess but as divine necessity. When Gaza’s children are framed as collateral in a war against demons, restraint dissolves. “Rescue” missions become raids. Biometric ID checks become acts of purification. Flashbangs and prayer go hand in hand.
This theology doesn’t merely justify the occupation of Gaza, it sanctifies it. And as this ideology spreads through networks of veterans, missionaries, and private contractors, the lines between faith, militarism, and aid grow fatally blurred.
IV. The Children. Anti-Trafficking as Cover.
One of the most striking patterns in the Gaza privatized aid network is the heavy emphasis on child trafficking prevention. On its surface, this appears like an obvious humanitarian good. But when viewed in the context of Gaza’s siege, the presence of military contractors, and the growing influence of evangelical networks, that focus begins to raise red flags.
Groups like Sentinel Foundation frame their mission as protecting “the most vulnerable,” a phrase that often serves as a moral shield against scrutiny. This language isn’t new. Evangelical groups have long used child rescue narratives to promote Christian messaging, and in some cases, enable darker agendas. What’s changed is how these narratives now blend with military contractors, counterinsurgency tools, and surveillance infrastructure.
Matthew Murphy’s own career the shift. Before launching Sentinel, he founded Operation Light Shine (OLS), a Tennessee-based nonprofit funded by the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Task Force. OLS partnered with faith-based law enforcement teams across the southern United States, often combining police raids with Christian messaging. When Murphy transitioned to Sentinel, he brought that model with him—though the financial and legal relationship between the two entities remains opaque. Sentinel does not disclose whether it receives redirected funds, equipment, or personnel from OLS.
Today, Sentinel operates in Gaza as a “crisis response” group tasked with delivering aid and coordinating evacuations. Tim Tebow, the former NFL quarterback and evangelical philanthropist known for his Tim Tebow Foundation, has collaborated with Sentinel on high-profile rescues, such as evacuating 59 children with disabilities from Haiti to Jamaica in March 2024 amid gang violence. Tebow's endorsements add celebrity gloss to these efforts, blending faith with militant ops. But critics, including former aid workers and UN officials, have raised concerns about what this actually entails.
In June 2025, UNICEF reported over 5,000 children suffering with malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, with severe cases escalating faster than aid delivery could compensate. International Rescue Committee staff noted increased risks for unaccompanied minors amid displacement.
Some fear that anti-trafficking narrative is being used to obscure displacement. Reports from Gaza suggest that children are sometimes moved through aid corridors with limited oversight, under the guise of rescue. For instance, in March 2024, 68 children were evacuated from SOS Children's Village Rafah to the West Bank, with ongoing calls for peace. Others are brought to biometric processing sites where DNA and facial scans are taken, a practice that officials claim is for safety, but which critics liken to population control.
Online suspicions, while not fully substantiated, have deepened the scrutiny. Discussions on platforms highlight concerns that “American contractors are moving kids out of Gaza to Israel under the cover of child protection.” These attract attention from Palestinian journalists and fringe accounts, creating a murky space where legitimate questions get entangled with conspiracy.
This ambiguity may be the point. Evangelical anti-trafficking narratives thrive on the dramatic tension between darkness and deliverance. Whether or not actual trafficking is occurring, the moral theater around it allows groups like Sentinel to operate with little oversight. It also creates a potent justification for militarized intervention, even in the absence of clear evidence.
In 2010, Laura Silsby, an American missionary, was arrested in Haiti while attempting to smuggle 33 children out of the country under the guise of rescue. Though she claimed they were orphans, many had living parents. Her organization, New Life Children’s Refuge, was linked to U.S. evangelical networks and framed the operation as humanitarian.
One striking case involves Craig “Sawman” Sawyer, a former Navy SEAL who founded Veterans for Child Rescue, who has mixed military branding with conspiratorial, QAnon-adjacent rhetoric while raising millions. Sawyer claims to have run independent child trafficking sting operations in the U.S. with perfect conviction rates, often collaborating closely with law enforcement. In fact, his group was part of a child predator sting in Millersville, Tennessee, that became the subject of a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe. Court recordings revealed that volunteers, not sworn officers, posed as minors online, a violation of state law that led detectives to lie under oath about who sent chats. The operation was ultimately scrutinized for perjury, misuse of authority, and dangerous conspiracy overreach.
Sawyer responded with a 90-minute podcast rant, deflecting allegations by attacking the media and accusing the TBI of covering up trafficking rings, a classic conspiracist maneuver to avoid accountability
V. Gaza. A Battlefield for the Soul.
By mid-2025, the southern Gaza Strip had become something else entirely; not just a war zone, but a zone of spiritual conquest. Aid zones once managed by international organizations are now guarded by private contractors, most notably those tied to Sentinel Foundation and UG Solutions. These aren’t typical aid workers. They are former special forces operatives, many with evangelical backgrounds, working alongside with U.S.- and Israeli-backed logistics firms like Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and GHF.
Above video: Chaos erupts at a GHF ran aid distribution site in Rafah, Southern Gaza. Gunfire can be heard as Gazans try to flee, June 2025.
Four main aid distribution zones, near Rafah, Khan Yunis, and the corridor roads to Israel, serve as the operational backbone. Each is locked down with biometric checkpoints, perimeter fencing, and armed guards. UG Solutions secures the perimeters, while Sentinel contractors control the flow of aid, maintain biometric databases, and coordinate with Israeli intelligence on “threat screening.” GHF provides the official branding and funding structure, but the work on the ground is carried out by overlapping networks of veterans and ideologues.
The humanitarian rationale is that this structure protects Palestinians from Hamas exploitation and ensures fair distribution. But that justification did not hold. A New York Times investigation reveals that despite Israel's accusations of Hamas systematically stealing UN aid to justify restrictions, senior Israeli officials admit there's no proof of such theft, and the UN system was largely effective. Yet, over 100 aid agencies warned of "mass starvation," and 28 governments condemned Israel's "drip-feeding of aid" to Gaza's two million residents, as starvation deaths rise.
Testimonies from former contractors describes crowd control protocols that include drone dispersal, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. In some cases, lethal force was reportedly authorized during chaotic surges. Witnesses say children were often trampled or separated from their families in the confusion. Attempts to report these incidents were allegedly blocked by senior staff, citing operational security.
Even Israel’s July 17, 2025, strike on Gaza's Holy Family Church, which killed three and wounded 10, including a priest, drew little evangelical outcry online and otherwise, with some blaming victims for not fleeing despite sheltering there. Pope Leo condemned the "barbarity," but evangelical leaders like Moore remained silent or justified Israel's actions as "stray ammunition," reflecting Christian Zionism's prioritization of biblical Israel over Palestinian believers.
At briefing sessions, the language used to justify this violence blends military jargon with evangelical rhetoric. Contractors speak of “moral clarity,” “divine protection,” and “delivering souls from chaos.” These are not metaphors. One Sentinel employee reportedly told a colleague that “God put us here to restore order to a fallen place.”
This worldview does more than justify force, it sanctifies it. Gaza becomes not a tragedy to alleviate, but a proving ground for divine judgment. It is a battlefield not just for territory, but for the soul.
Even Israeli leadership has invoked this worldview. On October 28, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted directly from the Bible:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember and we are fighting.”
In Jewish and evangelical theology alike, Amalek is not just an ancient tribe but a symbol of evil to be utterly destroyed, as commanded in 1 Samuel 15:3. Netanyahu’s speech linked Israeli troops to a 3,000-year chain of warriors from Joshua ben Nun to modern military heroes, casting the war in Gaza as a sacred duty to “completely defeat the murderous enemy” and fulfill the promise of “never again.” In framing Gaza as Amalek, Netanyahu collapsed the line between state violence and divine mandate and created a fusion that mirrors the rhetoric used by evangelical contractors embedded in Gaza under the banner of “spiritual warfare.” (Video below.)
At the core of this effort lies a dangerous contradiction. Aid workers, supposedly there to save lives, are part of a system that has directly contributed to death and displacement. Yet they are rarely held accountable. Wrapped in the moral authority of humanitarianism, bolstered by military training, and justified by religious conviction, they operate with near-complete impunity.
For Palestinians, this is not salvation. It is occupation, draped in scripture, armed at the gates.
VI. Beyond Gaza. A Network of Dominion.
While Gaza is the most visible front in this new aid-industrial crusade, it is far from the only one. The organizations at the center of the crisis, Sentinel Foundation, UG Solutions, Safe Reach Solutions, etc. are part of a sprawling global network of evangelical, intelligence-linked, and privatized security outfits that have quietly embedded themselves in humanitarian and counter-trafficking work across multiple continents. These networks cloak their ideological ambitions in the language of rescue, crisis response, and faith-based service but their reach increasingly mirrors that of a privatized empire.
Matthew Murphy, the incendiary figure at the helm of Sentinel Foundation, has referenced prior operations in Africa where his teams conducted “manhunts” for warlords and traffickers. These operations, allegedly coordinated with U.S. intelligence, often occurred under the guise of counter-trafficking or child rescue but left few paper trails. Murphy himself has claimed “CIA detailee” status, though the nature of his attachment remains opaque. His transition from OLS to Sentinel appears seamless but unexplained, raising questions about the flow of federal funds and inter-agency cooperation.
Operation Light Shine, for its part, continues to function as a regional counter-trafficking partner, with growing ties in Central America and the Caribbean. Through INTERCEPT Task Forces, OLS trains law enforcement in countries like Honduras and El Salvador, while quietly promoting evangelical doctrine under the guise of “family restoration.” Its current leadership remains tight-lipped about its ties to Sentinel, but several Sentinel contractors, including co-founder Glenn Devitt, previously collaborated with OLS on “child rescue simulations.”
UG Solutions, meanwhile, operates international “faith-centered” security courses under CEO Jameson Govoni, a former Green Beret. These programs are offered to private military contractors, church networks, and government agencies, framing security work as a divine calling. One UG-linked training session in early 2025 reportedly instructed participants on how to “blend Christian witness into hostile zone engagement,” equating missionary work with combat readiness.
Safe Reach Solutions, still run by former CIA operative Philip Reilly, has become the logistical linchpin of this global network. Through partnerships with GHF and its parent legal entities, SRS has expanded operations into southern Lebanon, northern Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. Intelligence Online reported in June 2025 that Reilly consulted with Mossad operatives on “future corridor stabilization strategies,” a euphemism critics say refers to aid-backed demographic reshaping.
Even in Ukraine, whispers of Sentinel-affiliated “child extractions” from contested regions have begun to surface. These reports, mostly online and difficult to verify, describe ad hoc evacuations of orphans and refugees by private groups operating independently of state oversight, often routing through faith-based networks in Poland or Romania. Whether these are legitimate rescues or ideological interventions is unclear, but the murkiness of these operations is itself the problem.
What connects these disparate efforts is not just personnel or training, but a worldview: that the world is a battlefield between light and darkness, where Western Christians have both a duty and a right to intervene. Whether under the banner of anti-trafficking, disaster relief, or humanitarian assistance, these actors use crises to advance a religious-political agenda. They are not merely helping, they are planting flags.
This map is no longer marked by embassies and military bases. It is drawn in aid convoys, biometric scanners, and armed escorts wearing crosses on their flak jackets. From Gaza to Guatemala, from Mosul to Tegucigalpa, the new crusaders are already in the field.
VII. The Shadow of Conspiracy and Intelligence Fronts
Beneath the official narratives of counter-trafficking and humanitarian intervention lies another current, one less visible, but equally dangerous. The ideological ecosystem that sustains groups like Sentinel and OLS is steeped in conspiracy, eschatology, and a militarized theology of salvation. Many of these groups now operate in a gray zone, where anti-trafficking missions become platforms for myth-making, and intelligence veterans play prophet, warrior, and savior.
Matthew Murphy’s ideological statements and social media presence reflect an alarming alignment with far-right conspiratorial thinking. Posts praising “deliverance ministries” and claiming that schizophrenia can be cured through exorcism are punctuated by darker, politically charged claims: that global institutions are run by “communist Jews,” that Islam is inherently demonic, and that America’s enemies are not just physical, but spiritual. Several themes in his messaging, such as global child-trafficking conspiracies, satanic abuse narratives, and a coming divine reckoning, echo broader far-right myths. These motifs appear in his videos, training materials, and interviews, where he frames his mission as battling ‘principalities’ and rescuing children from networks of evil.
Murphy is far from alone. In private Telegram groups and on podcasts, contractors affiliated with Sentinel and OLS refer to Gaza as “a field of demons,” echoing the same eschatological framing used by far-right influencers. They circulate stories, never substantiated, of underground tunnels, satanic abuse, and the need for “God’s army” to intervene where governments have failed. This worldview justifies nearly anything: armed intervention, biometric control, biometric relocation, and the reeducation of entire populations.
This narrative isn’t fringe. It increasingly intersects with state-adjacent actors and funding pipelines. The GHF, still receiving tens of millions in U.S. aid, shares personnel and partners with these contractors. Former CIA officials like Philip Reilly don’t merely tolerate the evangelical ethos of their peers, they operationalize it. The fusion of intelligence culture with spiritual warfare creates a new form of soft power, one that is both deniable and deeply ideological.
Some former U.S. officials have begun sounding the alarm. Critics, including U.S. senators, have demanded answers on GHF funding amid opacity. In a July 28, 2025, press release, Senator Chris Murphy and 19 colleagues called for halting U.S. funding to GHF, citing over 700 deaths and 5,000 injuries at distribution sites, lack of transparency, and waived audits for $30 million. Despite this, no formal investigation has been launched.
Online, skeptics refer to Sentinel as a “faith-based intelligence cutout” and call the Gaza relief mission a “privatized psyop.” Accusations range from biometric surveillance-for-hire to covert missionary reeducation. Some are exaggerated. Others are disturbingly plausible.
In the end, this isn’t about one conspiracy. It’s about a system of belief that violence can purify, faith can authorize force, and law is subordinate to divine calling. This logic erases civilian status, hollows out humanitarianism, and transforms aid into warfare by other means.
And that is precisely the point.
VIII. Conclusion. The Weaponization of Faith.
The situation in Gaza was never just a humanitarian emergency. It has become a crucible where ideology, militarism, intelligence, and privatized aid collide to form something far more dangerous: a weaponized faith project masquerading as relief.
Over 1,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed at or near aid distribution points operated by GHF since May 2025. Many of those sites were staffed or secured by contractors from Sentinel Foundation and UG Solutions, armed, many trained in evangelical security seminars, and several publicly espousing beliefs that frame Islam not as a religion but as an enemy of God. These are not isolated incidents or fringe actors. They are part of a coordinated structure, backed by U.S. funding, interlinked with former intelligence officials, and wrapped in the moral authority of “saving the children.”
From Gaza to Central America, it is occupation by proxy masquerading as aid. It is the rebranding of militarized power as humanitarian grace. And in this model, the missionary, the mercenary, and the intelligence operative are one and the same.
Worse still, these efforts have embedded themselves in bipartisan consensus. Even as reports of abuses, dehumanizing rhetoric, and ideological extremism mount, there is little public scrutiny. Figures like Matthew Murphy are treated as legitimate faith leaders, despite calls for exorcisms of “Islamic demons” and praise for Hitler’s religiosity. Evangelical Zionists like Johnnie Moore, who assumed a leading role at GHF following Jake Wood’s resignation, bring the full weight of political access, media cover, and theological justification to this new frontier of empire.
The international implications are staggering. Humanitarian aid is now a vector for surveillance, social engineering, and sectarian warfare. Faith is no longer private belie, it has become policy. It is biometric checkpoints wrapped in biblical prophecy. It is famine relief doled out at gunpoint. It is the sword cloaked in scripture.
And it is spreading.
The aid-industrial complex of 2025 no longer simply echoes the failures of Iraq or Afghanistan. It reflects a deeper mutation: the fusion of American religious fundamentalism with global security architecture, operating in tandem with Israeli occupation policy and Western geopolitical objectives. Gaza is the pilot program, but the doctrine is scalable.
The question is no longer whether this crusade will continue…it’s how far it will go before someone calls it what it is.
