From GHF to Israel’s Representative to US Center Overseeing Gaza Ceasefire: Who Is Michael Eisenberg
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed Israeli-American businessman Michael Eisenberg as his representative to the US-led international monitoring mechanism overseeing implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
As part of Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, the US Central Command on Friday opened a Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel to oversee implementation of the ceasefire agreement and “facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza,” said a statement from US Central Command.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, Eisenberg will serve as Netanyahu’s representative in the American command center alongside Maj. Gen. Yaki Dolf, who represents the IDF and Israel’s defense establishment in the same forum.
Who’s Eisenberg?
Eisenberg is a businessman who runs Aleph, a venture capital firm with a £700 million fund that it invests in emerging Israeli companies.
In October 2023, he told the MailOnline, “I have two sons in the Israeli military who are at their army base waiting for instructions. I have other family members like nephews and cousins who are also preparing to go and fight.”
- Gaza “Death Traps”:
According to the report, citing two senior Israeli officials and one senior American official familiar with the matter, Eisenberg was previously involved with a group of businesspeople who helped establish the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
What is the GHF: After months of total Israeli blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid was allegedly distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.
Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described GHF aid sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.
Since GHF started operating aid sites in May, there were reports on near-daily shootings at or near GHF sites, starving aid seekers in Gaza and former US mercenaries have spoken out about witnessing gunfire against Palestinian crowds.
Human Rights Watch stated that Israel’s killing of aid seekers at GHF sites amounts to war crimes.
More than 1,800 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed trying to get food, at least 1,000 in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in August.
- Support of Israel:
Eisenberg is very supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself, particularly against the Palestinian resistance. He condemned the resistance October 7 operation.
“There is real evil in this world. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are evil,” he wrote in 2024 in a Medium post.
In a 2018 blog to The Times of Israel, he wrote, “For a real path forward in Gaza, we may need to ‘do some harm’ to what diplomats advocate,” adding “I propose that Israel and Egypt jointly take over the Gaza Strip militarily” and acknowledging this would cause casualties.
He criticised the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, in his Gaza article, saying it perpetuates a refugee‑“right of return” narrative and should be shut down in his plan. “The continued existence of UNRWA … keeps alive a notion that 700,000 Palestinians will move to homes inside of Israel. It won’t happen.”
In the MailOnline interview, he called Palestinians “animals and butchers.”
