What the “Project Aurora” case reveals about the perils of financial modeling in post-conflict humanitarian strategy and the blind spots of both consultants and commentators.
In July, the Financial Times unveiled a scandal that rippled across the global consulting and humanitarian sectors. According to internal documents and whistleblowers, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) developed a financial model under a project dubbed “Aurora”, estimating the cost of relocating up to 500,000 Palestinians from Gaza. The price tag: roughly $9,000 per person, totaling $5 billion. The plan was framed as a voluntary relocation package. Headlines quickly erupted with accusations of engineered displacement, “soft deportation”, and even ethnic cleansing. Activist campaigns surged. Partnerships were severed. A major consulting firm was suddenly implicated in what many described as a moral and political catastrophe [1].
But as with many outrage stories, the real scandal lies not just in what was done, but in how it was conceived. Project Aurora, far from being a clandestine geopolitical plot, reveals a deeper structural problem: the application of economic abstraction to human displacement, and of financial logic to ethical dilemmas. This article does not seek to defend BCG. Instead, it aims to analyze the project on its own terms, expose the flaws in its analytical foundations, and interrogate the ethical vacuum that allowed such a model to be produced and sustained.
The present study investigates what the project actually entailed, when and how it went off-track, how media responses alternated between hyperbole and insight, and why this episode reflects the broader dangers of consulting frameworks when applied to crisis zones. The result is a call not just for accountability, but for a rethinking of what analytical neutrality means in contexts shaped by violence, statelessness, and historical trauma.
Launched in late 2024, Project Aurora was originally framed as a pro bono feasibility study for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a Geneva-registered NGO created with backing from U.S. and Israeli security-linked interests. Over seven months, the project evolved into a fully billed consulting contract reportedly worth $4 million. According to a series of leaked documents obtained by the Financial Times, the core of the work focused on estimating the financial cost of various scenarios for Gaza’s post-conflict future [2].
Two primary models emerged. One proposed a voluntary departure plan: $9,000 in cash per person, aimed at relocating around 500,000 Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip. A second model lowered direct payments to $5,000 but added four years of subsidized housing and one year of food assistance. Neither model specified destination countries, but internal documents suggest that analysts expected relocation to lower-cost regions, likely outside Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories [3].
Total costs ranged from $2.5 to $5 billion. But the numbers obscured a deeper reality: they converted displacement into a solvable financial problem. The people of Gaza, already facing displacement, trauma, and siege, were treated as units in a logistical matrix.
BCG’s approach was methodologically consistent with its standard consulting playbook. The firm employed scenario modeling and comparative cost analysis – tools typically used in corporate restructuring or infrastructure investment projects. In Project Aurora, these tools were repurposed to evaluate the relative financial impact of different population movement strategies.
One internal document estimated that relocating Palestinians outside Gaza would cost approximately $23,000 less per person than providing humanitarian support to them within Gaza during reconstruction. This cost delta was not used to advocate for coercion directly, but it was nonetheless modeled, quantified, and used to inform strategic discussions [1]. The parameters of the model included estimates for logistics, housing, subsidies, cash disbursements, and donor willingness to pay. What was absent, however, was any serious consideration of the legal, moral, or political implications of such modeling.
This is consulting logic at its most dangerous: cold, detached, and irrationally narrow-minded.
By April 2025, BCG’s senior leadership had issued internal guidance halting the project. Concerns began to mount internally about the nature of the client, the implications of the work, and the potential reputational damage. Yet two senior partners continued the project in defiance of this directive, maintaining an unofficial team and billing through alternative structures [4].
The project continued through May 2025. When the FT story broke in July, BCG quickly dismissed the two partners and launched an external audit led by WilmerHale. CEO Christoph Schweizer described the episode as “reputationally very damaging” [5]. But by then, the damage had extended well beyond BCG’s brand. Save the Children suspended all collaboration with the firm, and the World Food Programme initiated a formal review [6].
The governance failure was clear. Yet so too was the absence of ethical guardrails embedded within the analytical process itself.
Following the FT’s publication, numerous media outlets rushed to characterize Project Aurora as an engineered deportation plan. Il Giornale d’Italia described BCG’s involvement as part of a “deportazione dei palestinesi” (“plan for the deportation of Palestinians”) and linked it to the creation of “hub mortali con il monopolio del cibo” (“deadly hubs with a monopoly over food”) [7]. The article quickly condemns BCG’s alleged role in the project but offers little explanation of what the consulting firm actually did or how the modelling work was conducted. While the moral outrage was understandable, much of the coverage lacked analytical rigor. Few outlets examined the mechanics of the modeling, the internal dissent within BCG, or the distinctions between scenario planning and policy endorsement.
To their credit, the FT maintained a balanced line: revealing what was done, who did it, and what the model said – without reducing the issue to a simplistic narrative. In contrast, many commentators elided nuance in favor of moral clarity. That clarity, while emotionally powerful, sometimes blurred lines between speculation and evidence.
Consultants are trained to abstract. To reduce complexity to decision trees. To turn chaos into cost. In many settings, this is a powerful tool. But in a context like Gaza, where human lives are already subject to the machinery of siege and occupation, abstraction becomes a form of violence. It echoes the chilling logic behind Staline’s adage : “a single death is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic”. In such settings, the consultant’s method can end up erasing the very people it aims to help.
BCG’s analysts likely believed they were offering logistical solutions to impossible problems. They framed their role as enablers of reconstruction and aid optimization. But in doing so, they transformed a fundamentally political and ethical question – where should displaced people go? why? under what conditions? with what consent? – into a line item in a cost model.
This is not just moral failure. It is methodological blindness.
Just as the Aurora Project risked turning human displacement into cost‑efficiency modeling, the Lavender system revealed how abstraction becomes lethal when detached from lived realities. +972 Magazine uncovered that the Israeli military’s AI, Lavender, identified as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants, often with minimal human review, turning the machinery of war into a numbers game. In both cases, what began as statistical modeling, whether estimating the financial feasibility of relocation or flagging targets for bombing, strips away the individuality and suffering of people. The result is a fragmentation of human life into codified data, where margins of error translate into civilian casualties or unwanted displacement, raising urgent ethical alarms over how algorithmic decisions are deployed in matters of life and death. [8]
One of the great myths of management consulting is that neutrality is possible. That modeling can be separate from ideology and numbers don’t carry politics. Project Aurora exposes the fallacy of that myth.
The concept of “voluntary relocation” collapses in a context where civilians face siege, aerial bombardment, and mass trauma. What does voluntariness mean in a cage? What choice does one have when offered $9,000 to abandon rubble?
By quantifying human movement without embedding ethical reasoning, BCG created a dangerously seductive fiction: that displacement can be priced. That consent can be bought. That neutrality is analytical rather than moral.
The BCG Gaza scandal is not just about two rogue partners or a rogue project. It is about the systemic flaws in how consulting firms approach geopolitics, humanitarian crises, and the lives of marginalized people. It is about the seductive power of models that erase the messiness of real life.
Accountability begins with transparency. But it must end with reform. Consulting firms must build political literacy, ethical review processes, and scenario boundaries that prevent financial abstraction from becoming ethical erasure.
Project Aurora was never just a spreadsheet. It was a symptom of something deeper: a worldview in which people are variables, and displacement is a strategy.
Edited by Maxime Pierre.
References
[1] : Foley, S. (2025, July 4). BCG modelled plan to ‘relocate’ Palestinians from Gaza. Financial Times.
https://www.ft.com/content/c0e661cc-55db-4e2a-b17b-a656e0cf6c14 (The New Humanitarian, Financial Times)
[2] : AURDIP. (2025, July). BCG a modélisé un plan de « relocalisation » des Palestiniens de Gaza. AURDIP.
https://aurdip.org/bcg-a-modelise-un-plan-de-relocalisation-des-palestiniens-de-gaza/ (The New Humanitarian, consulting.us)
[3] : Collaborateur. (2025, July). Nouveau rebondissement dans la mission du BCG à Gaza. Consultor.fr.
https://www.consultor.fr/articles/le-bcg-a-modelise-un-plan-de-reconstruction-de-gaza-prevoyant-le-deplacement-de‑500‑000‑palestiniens (The Wall Street Journal, Anadolu Ajansı)
[4] : NY Post Staff. (2025, July 9). Boston Consulting Group fires rogue employees who worked on Gaza ‘relocation’ plan. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/07/09/business/boston-consulting-group-fires-rogue-employees-who-worked-on-gaza-relocation-plan/ (The Wall Street Journal, New York Post)
[5] : Schweizer, C. (2025, July 8). BCG chief admits Gaza work was ‘reputationally very damaging’. Financial Times.
https://www.ft.com/content/6ddd81c2-6dc2-4d11-830b-631e08a43354 (Financial Times)
[6] : Ashing, I. (2025, July 8). Save the Children suspends work with BCG over “utterly unacceptable” Gaza role. The New Humanitarian.
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/07/08/save-children-suspends-work-bcg-over-utterly-unacceptable-gaza-role (The New Humanitarian)
[7] : Redazione. (2025, July). BCG, ruolo nel progetto “Aurora” per deportazione palestinesi… “Gli hub mortali con il monopolio del cibo”. Il Giornale d’Italia.
https://www.ilgiornaleditalia.it/news/esteri/719494/bcg-ruolo-nel-progetto-aurora-per-deportazione-palestinesi-e-in-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-gli-hub-mortali-con-il-monopolio-del-cibo-retroscena.html (Financial Times)
[8] Abraham, Y. (2024, April 3). Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza. +972 Magazine. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
[Cover Image] : JUHASZIMRUS, SevenStorm. (n.d.). Immeubles de grande hauteur [Photograph]. Pexels.
https://www.pexels.com/photo/immeubles-de-grande-hauteur-443383/
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