The attack that killed seven volunteers from World Central Kitchen is Israel’s latest assault on the humanitarian aid system in Gaza. This time most of the dead are Westerners, so Israel will have a hard time playing the strike down
By Amira Hass
Somewhere in the Israel Defense Forces’ chain of command, a decision was made to attack an international aid convoy based on a suspicion that at some point an armed man had traveled in that convoy. In the attack, missiles fired from an air force drone killed seven aid workers from the group World Central Kitchen.
It’s hard to overstate the gravity of the decision to open fire and the headache the drone operators have caused the IDF and Israel’s PR efforts. This headache wouldn’t have happened if the seven dead had been Palestinians, not Westerners, as six of them were.
After all, Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas hides behind civilians, so if the victims are Palestinians, it can say Hamas was responsible. Normally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t have rushed to express regret at the “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s PR efforts can’t justify the attack or obscure the repercussions – not only because of the identity of the people killed, but also because of World Central Kitchen‘s importance in the process Israel has been advancing for months: hindering the work of UNRWA to the point of eradicating the refugee agency. And this is happening as malnutrition and starvation ravage Gaza – especially in the north – and as the International Court of Justice expects Israel to ensure Gazans access to humanitarian aid.
World Central Kitchen has been the main player getting aid into northern Gaza by sea. This is the route the United States has promoted for the north since Israel rejected requests from the aid groups to open the short, fast and inexpensive land route through the northern border crossings, sparing the long and dangerous trip from the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in the south.
World Central Kitchen’s first, experimental shipment of aid by sea, funded by the United Arab Emirates, arrived in Gaza at the beginning of March. The second shipment, also funded by the Emirates, arrived near the Gaza City shore only this past Monday. But of the 400 tons of food and equipment for 1 million meals, only 100 tons were unloaded from the ships. Now, because of the attack and the organization’s decision to suspend its operations in Gaza, the ships are returning full to Cyprus.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian aid via the southern crossings remains below the required minimum, 500 truckloads daily. The daily average in March was only 159 trucks, as reported by the United Nations. The highest number came on March 28 – 264 trucks. The trucks have to wait many days for their turn in the Israeli security inspections.
And then only a small part of the cargo gets to northern Gaza because of the complex coordination with the IDF, the delays at the army’s internal checkpoints, IDF fire and the dangers of raids by gangs. As long as World Central Kitchen’s maritime route seemed safe, it was possible to downplay aid organizations’ difficulties in reaching northern Gaza. The killing of the valiant workers from the group therefore damages Israel’s efforts to appear it’s carrying out the instructions of the International Court of Justice.
Even before the maritime pilot program in March, World Central Kitchen, which the Palestinians were unfamiliar with before the war, raised its profile. Since October, it has provided more than 35 million hot meals and established more than 60 community kitchens. People noticed that its kitchens had cooking gas, which other organizations didn’t have, and that it offered fresh vegetables otherwise unavailable in markets, or only at exorbitant prices.
According to a source at an aid group, nearly overnight World Central Kitchen achieved an operation second in size only to UNRWA, which has been around since 1949. The swiftness of the launch suggests that the Israeli bureaucracy eased the process. That is, the drone operators struck an organization whose presence and work were important to Israel not only for humanitarian reasons but also politically: the aim to wipe UNRWA off the map.
Like every aid group in Gaza during the war, World Central Kitchen coordinated with the army. As with the other organizations, the IDF knows the location of each of its installations, its vehicles are marked with flags and tags, and its workers wear protective vests declaring who they are. The identity of each worker is known to the military authorities, who vet every volunteer. The route taken by every vehicle and convoy requires authorization by Israel. In the jargon of the army and aid groups, this process is called “deconfliction.”
At the beginning of December, Israel announced the establishment of the deconfliction mechanism for protecting aid workers and civilians, in the wake of a demand by David Satterfield, President Joe Biden‘s special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues. Representatives of aid groups report to liaison people at Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, who coordinate with the military forces on the ground.
This wasn’t the first incident during this war in which the IDF attacked vehicles and installations of international or local aid organizations; the UN believes that about 196 aid workers have been killed since the start of the war. Six Palestinians affiliated with Doctors Without Borders – aid workers and members of their families, among them two doctors and a little girl – have been killed by IDF fire, which has also damaged vehicles belonging to the organization. Palestinians who were inside a building of the British group Medical Aid for Palestinians were wounded. Fifteen Red Crescent paramedics were killed by Israeli fire as they were on their way to wounded people.
At least 16 times, Israel has fired at trucks bringing in food and at people crowding around them, whether because the men guarding the trucks were tagged as Hamas people or the soldiers in a tank felt their safety was threatened. That was the case when a tank crew fired on the masses surrounding a food convoy on February 29 – about 100 people were killed, some crushed to death by the frightened crowd, others by gunfire from the tank.
Most of these incidents were met by silence in the Israeli media, and the IDF didn’t apologize or admit a mistake. This is because the dead, the wounded and the unhurt but traumatized were Palestinians, and because UNRWA and the Red Crescent are automatically labeled collaborators with Hamas.
The killing of the World Central Kitchen volunteers, an attack that’s not the first of its kind, brings to the surface three basic elements in the IDF’s operations in Gaza. The first is the lack of coordination among the various forces, despite declarations to the contrary. The second is the relatively low rank that has authority to kill from the air. The third is the IDF’s great flexibility in what it considers collateral damage: the very large number of unarmed people, among them children, whom it’s “permissible” to kill in order to hit “one legitimate target.”
In the incident late Monday, the suspicion was that one “armed individual” (whose identity we still don’t know) was present. This was enough to allow the IDF drone operators to kill seven people who weren’t suspects or armed. This ease of opening fire is one of the explanations for the 14,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza so far, a figure provided by UNICEF.
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17 responses to “Israel Pays a Political Price for Killing Aid Workers – When They’re Not Palestinians”
Israel is Hebrew for murder.
One can only assume that Israel’s aim is to cut off all potential venues for aid and food to the Palestinians. Dozens of aid workers (and reporters) have been murdered by the Israeli government. Using the flimsy excuse that Hamas hides amongst them is tired trope. Hamas is the Palestinians. Purpose is to starve the Palestinians to death creating one of the most horrible genocides in history. And the west aids and abets them. And the west calls Russia evil. Russia is a pussycat compared to the Israelis.
The presumed ‘presence of one armed individual’ is just an excuse. The attack was staged to send a deliberate message to all other aid workers, to scare them into quitting. It was decided at the highest level, not somewhere in the chain of command.
Here is an accurate explanation. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”
“The ‘logic’ behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children”. How dare those who condemn Nazism and condone Judaism.
“It was decided at the highest level, not somewhere in the chain of command.”
In which case, Paul, look no further than $to£t€nb€rg and Nato HQ.
The alacrity with which this po$$€ of €uropean white supremacist global pillage idiots dropped the UNRWA funding for Palestine on the day the ICJ found ‘plausible genocide’ in South Africa’s case (Zilch evidence for the UNRWA smear-job) indicates where the organ-grinders are located as Bibi dances like Salome to stay out of prison.
The whole $hit show is framed as ‘Israel’s war on Hamas’…it is actually the Ang£o-AmeriKKKan war for neo£iberal ‘full spectrum domination’ with the Germans, French et al clicKKKing their high he€£$ in obedient order.
Behind $to£t€nberg??
Blackrock, Blackstone, State Street, McDonnell-Douglas, Raytheon, BAe, Elbit, Unit 2800…BP, Exxon…??
Cui bono??
BIG po$$€.
The unstoppable force of Roman imperial ‘divide et impera’ mi£itari$m finally approaches impact on the immovable object of Sino-Russian resistance to the global pillage idiocy of 2.5K years of bloodbathing. A BRICS wall for Wa££ $tr€€t.
Sumtin gotta give.
“The unstoppable force of Roman imperial ‘divide et impera’ mi£itari$m finally approaches impact on the immovable object of Sino-Russian resistance to the global pillage idiocy of 2.5K years of bloodbathing. A BRICS wall for Wa££ $tr€€t. Sumtin gotta give.”
My outlook these days is a tad on the gloomy side, because I realize the counterfeit empire of the west that is on an unstoppable collision course with BRICS, is a globe-straddling criminal entity that is fed from many, often hidden, sources, with centuries of momentum and almost limitless wealth behind it. It is akin to a seven-headed hydra with a dozen different tentacles all working in unison to swindle, deceive, and destroy anything that gets in its way! The Empire and its minions will not go down easily or willingly, and to pry its ugly fingers off the throat of the world, will require nothing less than a major global upheaval (WWIII, which has already started), that might send us back to the stone age, if we survive at all. If we are to build a new, sane world worth living in, the battle must be fought, no matter what the cost, and it is inevitable that it will; it is also inevitable that the cost in blood for this new world will be extremely high! This global conflict with BRICS that is already underway, is like a complex equation with many variables, therefore, many different outcomes are possible, not all of them good. The end result of this conflict may very well be our “Planet of the Apes” moment. I surely don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t think anyone else does either…only time will tell how this epic battle for the world will unfold!
Well, Israel—no one came to save you in WW 2. Apparently Netanyahu has come to believe that since no one saved them in WW 2—that they must now kill all those who PERHAPS in the past did not help Israel. Yet, there was no Israel yet—it was Palestine 1948. So, those Israelis who decide to begin murdering Palestinians back in 1948 are now actively killing as many Palestinians as possible. In fact the horrific Joe Biden seems to agree and allows Israel all kinds of killer machines—even Trump approves that.
Sadly 2 idiots are running for President , and we all know that they don’t care one bit about Palestine and its people. But the world does care—in spite of the attempt by the US and Israel. It is time to nuke Tel Aviv and have Israel clean up its own mess after stealing land and murderoing Palestinians since at least—1948. Long live Palestine!
Jill Stein is mobilising a credible case to run (despite the goalpost shifters).
If she can get media coverage, she might just upset their applecarts.
No doubt grassy KKKno££$ are being readied.
The Jewish world Congress started WWII and were saved when Russia won the war against Germany.
More boneheaded, imbecile fantasy history. No surprise.
More barking dog gibberish from an apparently drunken Paul Edwards.
acism and Bigotry are Jews’ most sacred and craved for values. They are deeply-entrenched in Jewish animals. THE TALMUD OF THE JEWISH RELIGION, 63 BOOKS OF ONLY HATRED, HATRED, ONLY HATRED FOR ANYTHING (GOY) THAT IS NOT JEWISH. Since 1947, the goal of Jews in Palestine is the extermination of the Palestinian people with the full endorsement of the Anglo-American regimes.
Israeli Jews have been killing Aid workers and journalists since October 2023. The recent Jewish terrorist attack that killed seven Aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza was not a mistake. To the contrary, the convoy was targeted “systematically, car by car,” the group’s founder and celebrity chef Jose Andres told Reuters on Wednesday. It was not the first time. According to UNRWA report, 179 Aid (UN) workers have been killed by the Jews since the Israel aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza. In addition, since October, at least 140 journalists (poor Assange was not among them) have been murdered by Jews, around 5 journalists every week. Israeli leaders have often stated that journalists and Aid workers are legitimate targets. By killing Aid workers and journalists, Israel have been using starvation as weapons unhindered. Netanyahoo is a dirty violent criminal and would be hanged for his war crimes in any civilised society. He is lucky living in history’s most barbaric and psychopathic animals entity.
Check your meds dosage, Gene…you’ve KKKicked into manic-bigot overdrive again.
I saw the faces of several new Hamas fighters looking into the burnt out vehicle.
What the Jews and zionists have done in Gaza is nothing but a giant recruitment drive for future fighters for the liberation of Palestine.
Prometheus, what is it with this silly use of characters? We got the point, after months now. Give it a break. I can no longer waste time trying to decipher what the hell you want to say.
Although it’s good that many people got outraged over the Jews’ slaughter of White aid workers, it does demonstrate the bigotry of the West. If those aid workers were all Palestinian, would there have been such a reaction? I don’t think so.
As long as there remains one Palestinian alive, the spirit of resistance will not die. —– The blowback from what have been barbaric/sadistic crimes against humanity of historic proportions will be spectacular. ——— Israel is doomed. —- The UN must undo the mistake of 1948 and dissolve the apartheid state of Israel. The nation of Palestine, with equal rights for all – from the river to the sea -, to be administered internationally for a period of time until elections/gov’t can be formed. Israeli/international funds to rebuild Gaza.