On Monday, seven aid workers from the humanitarian aid group World Central Kitchen (WCK) died in Gaza when Israel attacked their vehicles with air-launched missiles. In an interview with Reuters yesterday, World Central Kitchen founder chef José Andrés rejected the Israeli government’s claims that the airstrikes were a tragic accident, saying that the attack had targeted the aid workers “systematically, car by car” and that WCK had notified the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of its route prior to and even during the attack.
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” Andrés said.
“This was over a 1.5, 1.8 kilometers, with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof, a very colorful logo that we are obviously very proud of,” he said. It’s “very clear who we are and what we do.”
The workers were attacked after helping unload 100 tons of food aid that WCK brought in by sea to northern Gaza, where the group has constructed a temporary jetty to dock ships carrying aid, in coordination with the Spanish aid group Open Arms. Those shipments have involved close coordination not only with Israel’s military, but also with Arab nations and other NGOs, Andrés said.
Andrés also told Reuters that he had originally planned to be with his aid team in Gaza but was unable to travel there at the time. He said the IDF definitely knew about the convoy’s identity and movements Monday.
“They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF. They knowing that it was our teams moving on that road … with three cars,” he said.
There were two armored SUVs and one unarmored vehicle in the convoy, all of them with the group’s logo on the roofs and sides of the vehicles. Andrés said that the IDF first hit the armored SUV that was leading, and the team was able to get out, then move to the second vehicle. It too was hit, but again everyone survived and piled into the third one.
The aid workers tried to communicate to make clear who they were, he said, adding IDF knew they were in the area which it controlled.
Then the third car was hit, “and we saw the consequences of that.”
In a video statement Tuesday, before Andrés alleged the IDF knew exactly who it was attacking, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack a ““tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people” and promised a full investigation, but also said “It happens in war, we are fully examining this, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again.” Yes, we suppose these things do happen. Mistakes were made. So it goes.
In a New York Times op-ed Wednesday (gift link), Andrés said that his group has fed both Israelis and Palestinians in the months since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas that killed around 1,200 Israelis.
Andrés also called for an immediate cease-fire, noting that Gaza is on the verge of famine:
We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.
Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.
The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.
In the worst conditions, after the worst terrorist attack in its history, it’s time for the best of Israel to show up. You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza. You cannot win this war by starving an entire population.
While the US has backed Israel’s insistence that the attack wasn’t targeted at the aid workers, President Joe Biden also issued a statement Tuesday saying he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the deaths of the aid workers, and said Israel’s investigation of the attack “must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public.”
Biden also said that the attack was not an anomaly, taking Israel to task for the deaths of nearly 200 humanitarian workers in Gaza so far and saying Israel has “not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians.” But yes, the US is not pausing arms deliveries to Israel either.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial (free signup may be needed to read) that an investigation, however thorough, would not be enough, particularly since the “mistaken identity” excuse didn’t wash:
Israeli security sources said the World Central Kitchen’s vehicles were clearly marked as belonging to the organization both on their roofs and on their side panels. They were traveling on a route that had been approved in advance with the army, as was that particular journey.
The editorial also called attention to new reporting that calls into question the IDF’s estimate that 9,000 of the 32,000 people killed in Gaza were “terrorists,” since according to interviews with active and reserve IDF officers, the label is applied to “anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate,” as one reserve officer put it.
The report found that the terrorist designation is not based on what the individual was doing at the time he was targeted but on whether he entered the “kill zone” established by the local IDF commander. “As soon as people enter it, mainly adult males, orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed,” the officer said.
Gosh, sounds a lot like the deceptive “body counts” the Pentagon used to insist that the US was winning the Vietnam war, back in ancient history.
The editorial closed by saying that report on the IDF’s casual approach to counting casualties, taken together with the “hunger and vast destruction” and the attack on WCK aid workers, “should tell us that the time has come to end the war.”
In a front-page editorial, Britain’s Independent newspaper also called for an immediate end to the war, beginning with an acknowledgement that
It may seem wrong that, after more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have perished, it took the deaths of just seven international aid workers to stir Western governments into a sense of outrage, but that is the reality.
Yes, better that the killing had stopped before, as the UN estimates, 13,000 children have died in Gaza since the horrific Hamas attacks. And before 27 children have died from starvation, a number that’s certain to increase. But if it took the deaths of Westerners to finally push other countries to demand an end to the fighting, better now than after more thousands are killed.
[Reuters / NYT (gift link) / White House / Haaretz (may require free signup) / Independent]