Article
“You Go”: What a Girl in Gaza Told Anthony Aguilar, and What Toronto Owes Her
She was a young girl in a purple backpack, carrying two empty boxes.
On Saturday evening I sat in a full room at Justice For All Canada’s Love Ummah: A Night for Rights in Toronto, and listened to retired US Army Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar tell her story. Aguilar served 25 years in the US Army, including as a Green Beret. In 2025 he worked as a security contractor at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites, then resigned in protest. [1] [2] [3]
Anthony Aguilar told the room the food at the site was “dried rice, flour, dried beans, with no way for households to prepare it, because we were providing no water.” He said the girl came back day after day and found nothing. “I came yesterday and there was no food. I come today and there’s no food.”
He told us he and other contractors had hidden cookies under their seats. He said they had to sneak them in because Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint searched them and would not let them bring in even their own water. He handed her a pack. She opened it right away and gave the cookies out to other children. “Give me another,” she said. Then again. In his words, she said: “If you’re not going to feed my people, I will.”
When he told her to go home, she said: “This was my home. Right here is my home.” He said she meant the ground they were standing on, where her house had stood, now levelled flat. She pointed to where her mosque had been, the hospital where she was born, her school. Then she tightened her backpack straps to walk eight to ten kilometres back under bombardment. She looked at him and said: “You go.”
Anthony also told us about an eight-year-old boy. He said the boy walked at least eight kilometres, barefoot and alone, after his father was killed in an airstrike and he was separated from his mother. He said the boy picked scraps of food off the ground, then came over to thank the contractors. “He didn’t come to complain or to spew hate. He came to thank us. He was an eight-year-old boy, and he was thankful.” Anthony told the room the boy was killed at that distribution site on May 28, 2025.
Aguilar said the girl’s words, “You go,” ended 25 years of believing in what he had served. He resigned. He told us that since he started speaking, he has been called “a traitor,” “a terrorist sympathizer,” and “unpatriotic.” His answer was simple: “I’m human.”
What he says he saw
Aguilar also described a planning map he says he saw on a wall at the Israeli military’s Southern Command headquarters in Beersheba. He said it showed Gaza rebuilt in phases: debris removal, condominiums, a technology park, high-speed rail, golf courses and resorts. He said it was called Project Sunrise.
This is his testimony, and I present it as that. What is on the public record is that a US-led draft plan called “Project Sunrise” has been reported, with high-rise towers, high-speed rail and luxury resorts on Gaza’s rubble. [4] A separate leaked prospectus, reported by the Washington Post, included an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone.” [5] The Financial Times reported that staff at Boston Consulting Group helped set up GHF and modelled the cost of “relocating” hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of Gaza. BCG has since fired two partners and disavowed that work. [6] [7]
Plans to rebuild a place for profit, drawn up while its people are starving, should shame every government that tolerates them.
Who carries the blame
The responsibility lies with the Government of Israel and its military, and with every government that arms and shields them. It does not lie with Jewish people, many of whom stand with Palestinians and have said so loudly. Aguilar said it himself: “It doesn’t matter if you’re Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, Asian, Jewish, Christian, white, black, male, or female. If this type of injustice goes unaddressed, unaccounted for, we are all next.”
Leading human rights bodies, including a UN Commission of Inquiry, have concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. [8]
What a city can do
A mayor cannot end a war. But a city is not powerless, and silence is a choice. Here is what I have committed to:
- No campaign donations from pro-Israel lobby groups. My campaign answers to Torontonians, not to lobbies.
- No welcome for anyone wanted by the International Criminal Court. If Benjamin Netanyahu sets foot in Toronto, I will demand that the Government of Canada arrest him and hand him over to the Court. A mayor cannot make the arrest; Canada can, and has a duty to cooperate with the Court. [9]
- Protecting the right to speak. No Torontonian should fear losing a job or being targeted for speaking out for Palestinian lives.
- I will use the strong-mayor powers the province has given the office so that the City’s commitments on human rights are carried out, not just announced.
The room
This was not the first time I heard Anthony tell this story. In May, I was one of the few people who welcomed him at Queen’s Park. We stood in the rain while he told it. Telling that story to the world is not an easy task, and hearing it a second time did not make it easier.
The room was a banquet hall, full of round tables, chandeliers and families who had come out on a Saturday night. When Anthony’s photos went up on the screens, the room went quiet. We were sitting at tables set for dinner, looking at children who had walked kilometres for a box of dry flour.
As far as I could see, I was the only candidate for mayor in the room. I came with many questions for Anthony. I asked him where the politicians running in Toronto’s election stand on Gaza, and what it means to have a leader who has shown genuine support for Gaza, compared with those who make performative gestures. I was stopped before I could hear his answer, and he was not permitted to answer it. The question still stands, and I will keep asking it. Before I left, I told Anthony that if there were ten people like him in the world, the world would be a better place.
What stayed with me was how many people there had already given something: their time, their voices, and for some, their safety on the flotillas. Toronto is full of people like this, and they deserve a City Hall that doesn’t ask them to stay silent.
Who are we voting for, and why?
With all this truth coming from an eyewitness, we have to question ourselves: who are we voting for in this election, and why?
Do we vote for Brad Bradford, who marched up Bathurst Street in this June’s Walk with Israel and told the crowd, “To Toronto’s Jewish community: I stand with you,” but has offered no word I can find for the children of Gaza? [10]
Or do we vote for Olivia Chow, who called it a genocide at a gala closed to the media, yet whose platform makes no commitment on Gaza or on anti-Palestinian racism? [11] [12] When she moved City Council’s anti-hate motion in 2023, she named antisemitism and Islamophobia but left out anti-Palestinian racism. [13] That same week, she called a Palestinian rally at Nathan Phillips Square a “rally to support Hamas,” then apologized and called it a mistake. [14] In January, Guy Hochman, an Israeli comedian accused of war crimes by Canadian and Belgian human rights groups, performed in North York. I could find no public statement from the mayor. [15] When Jerusalem’s deputy mayor planned to fundraise in Toronto this August, it was Ottawa, not City Hall, that stopped him. [16]
In March 2024, when an expo came to a synagogue in Thornhill to sell homes in illegal West Bank settlements, I stood outside with the protesters. Canada’s own government calls those settlements illegal. Stolen land should never be sold on Canadian soil. [17]
Words spoken behind closed doors do not feed a child in Gaza. I have called for Netanyahu’s arrest under the ICC warrant if he sets foot in Toronto, and I take no donations from pro-Israel lobby groups. Silence is a choice, and so is your vote.
The fierce urgency of now
The host closed the night by naming the work Justice For All Canada does: a delegation that tried to reach the West Bank, a Senate advocacy day, and submissions to the United Nations. People in the room had sailed on flotillas trying to bring aid into Gaza.
Aguilar ended with a call I will carry with me: “If you can protest, protest. If you can advocate, advocate. If you can donate, donate. If you can volunteer, volunteer.” And: “There is such a thing as being too late, and we cannot be too late.”
That girl did not cry, complain or beg. She fed others with what little she had, and she told a soldier to go home. Toronto can at least refuse to look away.
Election day is Monday, October 26. I am No. 2 on the ballot.
Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Candidate for Mayor of Toronto
References
- Justice For All Canada, “Love Ummah: A Night for Rights” (event listing). https://www.justiceforallcanada.org/
- Defending Rights & Dissent, “Event recap: Gaza Humanitarian Foundation whistleblower Anthony Aguilar,” October 2025. https://www.rightsanddissent.org/news/event-recap-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-whistleblower-anthony-aguilar/
- Al Jazeera, “GHF whistleblower says boy killed by Israel just after he collected aid,” July 31, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/31/ghf-whistleblower-says-boy-killed-by-israel-just-after-he-collected-aid
- The Times of Israel, “US said to pitch ‘Project Sunrise’, $112B plan to rebuild Gaza as luxury destination” (citing The Wall Street Journal), December 2025. https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-to-pitch-project-sunrise-a-plan-to-rebuild-gaza-as-luxury-destination/
- The Washington Post (document), “The GREAT Trust” prospectus. https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f86dd56a-de7f-4943-af4a-84819111b727.pdf
- Financial Times (via Reader Supported News), “BCG modelled plan to ‘relocate’ Palestinians from Gaza,” July 6, 2025. https://www.rsn.org/001/bcg-modelled-plan-to-relocate-palestinians-from-gaza.html
- Boston Consulting Group, “Correcting the record on BCG teams’ involvement in work in Gaza,” June 7 and July 6, 2025. https://www.bcg.com/news/6july2025-clarifying-bcg-involvement-with-aid-in-gaza
- UN News, “Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide,” September 16, 2025. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165856
- International Criminal Court, “ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I rejects the State of Israel’s challenges to jurisdiction and issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant,” November 21, 2024. https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges
- JNS, “60,000 march for Israel in Canadian parade, organizers say,” June 2026. https://www.jns.org/news/world/60-000-march-for-israel-in-canadian-parade-organizers-say
- The CJN, “Jewish groups blast Toronto mayor Olivia Chow’s ‘genocide in Gaza’ remarks,” November 2025. https://thecjn.ca/news/jewish-groups-blast-toronto-mayor-olivia-chows-genocide-in-gaza-remarks/
- Olivia Chow for Mayor, “Olivia’s Plan.” https://www.oliviachow.ca/plan
- City of Toronto, MM11.37 “Keeping Toronto Safe from Hate,” October 2023. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/mm/bgrd/backgroundfile-239874.pdf
- Yahoo News Canada, “Toronto mayor criticized, ‘admits mistake’ in confusion over Palestine rally,” October 2023. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/olivia-chow-mayor-palestine-israel-rally-161254626.html
- Toronto Star, “Toronto’s new ‘bubble zone’ bylaw was put to the test this week during a visit by a controversial Israeli comedian,” January 20, 2026. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontos-new-bubble-zone-bylaw-was-put-to-the-test-this-week-during-a-visit/article_0c1e7fdb-391d-4aa2-b674-67c0bb9a627e.html
- Middle East Eye, “Canada bars Jerusalem deputy mayor Arieh King from entering country,” August 26, 2026. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/canada-bars-jerusalem-deputy-mayor-arieh-king-entering-country-war-crimes
- CBC News, “Arrests made at protest outside Toronto-area synagogue hosting event marketing occupied West Bank land,” March 7, 2024. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/thornhill-israeli-real-estate-event-protest-1.7137131
Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam is an engineer, educator and independent candidate for Mayor of Toronto. Her full platform is at bahira.ca.
Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Independent Candidate for Mayor of Toronto
bahira.ca
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