In the hours after seven members of his World Central Kitchen team were killed by a series of Israeli missile strikes on their aid convoy, grieving chef José Andrés wrote a remarkable letter addressed to all Israelis.
Published on Ynet, the online version of the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper and a major news source for Israelis, the piece by the U.S.-based founder of WCK appealed to the people of Israel’s morality.
“Israel is better than the way this war is being waged,” Andrés wrote. “It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who co-ordinate their movements with the [Israel Defence Forces].”
Founded by Andrés, World Central Kitchen delivers meals to people in natural disaster or conflict zones.
In the days and weeks after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, Andrés’s team served more than 1.75 million hot meals to Israelis while many were still reeling from the horrific events and feeling profoundly vulnerable.
Weeks later, Andrés’s teams shifted their efforts to war-torn Gaza, where the NGO has gone on to serve more than 45 million meals to desperately hungry Palestinians.
The need in the territory remains greater than ever, but on Tuesday, Andrés announced that because of the Israeli attack on his team, he was putting the food program in Gaza on hold. The group was also responsible for running a sea supply route between Cyprus and Gaza, and put that on hold on Tuesday as well, turning around a vessel that was poised to deliver more than 200 tonnes of food.
A dual Canada-U.S. citizen delivering aid for the group World Central Kitchen was among seven workers killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. In response, world leaders have called for an investigation and aid groups have stopped delivering aid to people close to famine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the missile attack and called the deaths “tragic” but also cautioned that “this happens in wartime.” Andrés rejected this explanation and implored Israel’s government, and especially ordinary Israelis, to think about how the conflict is unfolding.
“You cannot win this war by starving an entire population,” he wrote.
The question is whether the killing of six foreign aid workers (the seventh WCK worker killed was a local Palestinian) will prompt Israel to rethink its war strategy when the deaths of more than 32,000 Palestinians — including 180 humanitarian workers — so far has not.
‘Something has gone horribly wrong’
Long-time Israel watchers believe the odds are not promising.
“Something has gone horribly wrong in the moral fibre of the society, of the military,” said Daniel Levy, of the U.S./Middle East Project, who served on Israel’s peace negotiation team during the 1990s.
“Israel has self-censored,” he told CBC News, suggesting Israelis are so fixated on the idea of defeating Hamas that they have blocked out notions of right and wrong.
“We have been given layer after layer of pre-emptive justifications [by the government] for what, tragically, increasingly, looks like the committing of war crimes on the part of Israel.”
While thousands of Israelis have staged public protests against Netanyahu, particularly over the government’s failure to liberate hostages that remain in the hands of Hamas, some polling suggests Israelis are still broadly in favour of the war.
The U.S. State Department, United Nations agencies and multiple aid groups have deplored the lack of humanitarian assistance that Israel is allowing into Gaza and warned about the risk of starvation.
In recent days, however, the Israeli government agency that oversees aid deliveries into Gaza has fought back, by claiming the threat of starvation in Gaza is overblown.
Food shortages
In its own report, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said the United Nations is overstating the severity of hunger in Gaza because it relies on data provided by Hamas and that the observations of its own soldiers indicate food is plentiful, including in markets.
COGAT’s observations have been refuted by the U.S. State Department as well as by Palestinians in Gaza who told CBC News food scarcity is widespread.
U.S. State Department officials told Reuters that at most, 250 aid trucks were entering Gaza daily, whereas 400 to 500 were required before the war. And since the fighting has halted farming and domestic food production, far more aid is needed now.
After World Central Kitchen said it would pause operations in the region after an Israeli airstrike killed seven international aid workers, Palestinians who relied on the charity for food lamented the impact it will have on people in Gaza.
Israel’s government has banned the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, from making food deliveries in northern Gaza, where hunger is most acute. It accuses the agency of promoting Hamas’s ideology and claims several UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. Canada and other foreign governments say they have yet to see concrete evidence of that.
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, recently returned from a trip to Gaza and said Israel could quickly alleviate hunger in northern Gaza if it opened up two northern crossing points, which it has refused to do.
Levy says the Israeli government made the “decision to target the civilian population from Day 1.”
“The very first announcement that came out [from Israel’s government] was that we will stop food, fuel, water, electricity from entering Gaza,” he said.
Little discussion in Israeli media
The Israel Defence Forces have promised a transparent investigation into the April 2 attack on the World Central Kitchen workers, and the IDF leadership reiterated that its fight is against Hamas, not ordinary Palestinians.
But some analysts suggest the absence of much discussion in Israeli media about the horrendous Palestinian civilian casualties suggests people there have tuned out the suffering.
“Such ‘collateral damage’ is taken as acceptable,” said Mairav Zonszein of the non-profit International Crisis Group, who’s based in Tel Aviv.
With regards to the killing of the foreign aid workers, Zonszein says “mistakes” by the IDF that lead to civilian deaths have become commonplace.
“Those mistakes happen so often that there’s clearly a problem — a problem with how the army is functioning,” said Zonszein.
‘Some people with sleep without food’
How much soul-searching Israelis will do over the conduct of the war as a result of the deaths of the seven NGO workers remains to be seen. But the immediate impact of the missile strike on the convoy is already being felt.
A freelance journalist working for CBC News visited one of the group’s shuttered kitchens in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Tuesday, following news the group was halting operations.
As the UN warns of imminent famine in Gaza, the Al-Madhoun family has set up an ad hoc soup kitchen to feed people living in the north of the war-torn territory. ‘It’s extremely difficult,’ says Abu Omar Al-Madhoun. ‘We go through hell just to get eggplants, or potatoes or carrots or rice.’
“I honestly don’t know what I will do with my family, but I think it will be hopeless,” said Fares El Masry, who was displaced to Rafah from his home in Beit Lahia. “There are a lot of people who depend on the kitchens.”
In a report last month, World Central Kitchen said it was providing the majority of NGO aid in Gaza, accounting for 62 per cent of the meals served to people there.
Nihad Abu Kwaik, who worked at the WCK kitchen in Rafah, said people in Gaza will suffer without the services Andrés’s team provided.
“Some people will sleep without food,” he told CBC News.
Late Tuesday night, the head of the IDF, Herzi Halevi, said he received a preliminary report that the attack on the World Central Kitchen team was a result of “misidentification” in “complex conditions.”
“Israel is creating not only a breakdown of order, but then the people who try to fill it are also being targeted,” said Zonszein.
“It’s very hard not to see this as some kind of strategy of using aid as a weapon.”
Andrés and his charity World Central Kitchen accepted the challenge of delivering desperately needed food aid to a famine-threatened Gaza. Seven of his team were killed by an Israeli strike on April 1. This interview was recorded before the attack.