The Media Line: Former Head of GHF Johnnie Moore Leads Mideast Studies Program at Pepperdine University

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Former Head of GHF Johnnie Moore Leads Mideast Studies Program at Pepperdine University

He said many Middle East studies programs “became totally, totally infiltrated and infected with unhelpful politics and ideology,” leaving students without the tools they need to understand the region

By Felice Friedson / The Media Line

The crisis in Gaza throughout two years of war and the aftermath inspired endless heated debates about the plight of Palestinian civilians, but few provided workable solutions or insight to inspire change. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was established by the U.S. and Israeli governments to improve the lives of Gazans, where other organizations had failed to meet the needs of a population in crisis.

Speaking to The Media Line, Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader and businessman who took the helm of GHF, described the transition from coordinating food deliveries for people struggling to survive in Gaza to stepping into a classroom to guide students who want to understand the Middle East.

Moore cited years spent navigating global crises. He has traveled to “more than 100 countries” and has long been involved in what he called “tractive diplomacy.” He has spent time in some of the world’s largest refugee camps, including Dadaab and Zaatari, and worked in places as varied as Bosnia and Zimbabwe. From all of these experiences, a pattern emerged: “The biggest challenges that we have in the world are leadership challenges,” especially in the Middle East.

American academic centers have not been preparing students to confront those challenges. According to Moore, many Middle East studies programs “became totally, totally infiltrated and infected with unhelpful politics and ideology,” leaving students without the tools they need to understand the region.

This concern motivated him to help create a new Middle East studies program at Pepperdine University. “These students are incredible,” he told me. He explained that every student admitted to the program receives a full scholarship for the two-year course of study, and that the initiative will “take zero foreign money.” Between their first and second years, he added, students travel to Israel and the Gulf to see the region firsthand.

For Moore, the appeal of the program is the chance to contribute directly to the next generation of leadership. As he put it, he is excited not only to advocate for better leaders but to “be a part of a team that’s going to help train them up and send them out.”

Recalling his work with GHF, an organization that provided “over 180 million meals … for free to the people of Gaza” during a period when, according to UN data, most assistance was not reaching civilians, he told The Media Line that the initiative was “an incredible, incredible project” and said he was grateful to have been part of it.

GHF did more than just provide physical nourishment but “helped create the conditions to bring us to the place we are now — to see the hostages free, to see the people of Gaza be able to raise their voice against Hamas, to allow the president of the United States and his team to achieve everything that they wanted to achieve.” He described the period as “a historic couple of months.”

Even after such a significant contribution, Moore was modest: “I shouldn’t get any other credit,” he said, emphasizing that success belonged to “the brave local Gazans that showed up every day” and to “the incredible former members of the U.S. Armed Forces that went into harm’s way every single day to feed people.” They, he said, “are the ones that got it done.”

When asked about the confusion surrounding aid deliveries during the war — allegations of theft, blockages and contradictory reports — Moore did not hesitate to describe the core challenge. “The biggest nightmare is that the United Nations is corrupt from top to bottom, and it’s incredibly incompetent,” he said, noting that its global reputation causes people to “just trust it” despite systemic failures. He clarified that the UN does carry out important work and that his team had wanted cooperation, saying, “It’s not that everything they do is bad … we wanted to work with them. Every single day, we tried to work with them.”

According to Moore, the breaking point came when UNICEF refused to provide high-nutrition supplements for children — supplies he said were largely funded by the United States. After repeated attempts, the foundation turned to Samaritan’s Purse, which began sending its own shipments. “They just started sending planeloads to save kids’ lives,” he said.

Moore added that he had not anticipated such resistance from agencies charged with humanitarian mandates. “I did not expect that the people in the world who were tasked with dealing with these things would be the primary opponents to the lives and livelihoods of these people we’re trying to help,” he said.

Despite the frustration, Moore believes the pressure may be prompting change and that his team “shined a very bright light into some very dark places.” Calls for reform are growing louder. In his view, the system must be fixed or replaced. “It either has to be reformed, and if it cannot be reformed or portions of it can’t be reformed, it needs to be shut down,” he said.