NGO World Central Kitchen aid workers were coordinating their journey with Israel and in clearly marked vehicles when the Israeli military murdered them with repeated drone strikes.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) killed seven people working with the NGO after the aid workers dropped off 100 tonnes of food at a warehouse in central Gazan city Deir al Balah. Those killed include people from Britain, Poland, Australia, and Palestine.
World Central Kitchen is an international food aid organisation that chef Jose Andres started and is on the ground in Gaza as well as other places like Ukraine.
Israel starving Palestinians en masse
Advancing its longstanding siege of the Palestinian Gaza strip, Israel cut off the food, water, and fuel chain supply in October 2023.
The state then blocked trucks of humanitarian aid, severely limiting the amount that made it into Gaza.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is investigating Israel for an ongoing “plausible” genocide in Palestine, has said that famine is now “setting in”.
The ICJ restated that Israel must allow sufficient food aid to reach the Palestinians, ordering the occupying force to take:
all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance
But Israel is not only continuing to use starvation as a weapon of war, as Human Rights Watch previously noted. It’s not only slaughtering the Palestinian people while they then seek food aid, known as the flour massacres. It is also killing the international aid workers trying to help.
World Central Kitchen founder Andres called for Israel
to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.
“Cold-blooded, calculated slaughter”
On social media, people made their assessment of Israel’s attack:
Let me be clear:
This was no “accident” or “incident”. The two World Central Kitchen vehicles were clearly WCK branded and had pre-liaised with the @IDF on their route plans. This was a cold-blooded, calculated slaughter of those delivering civilian aid.https://t.co/k1Yfedwwtf
— Red Collective (@RedCollectiveUK) April 2, 2024
We are aware of reports that members of the World Central Kitchen team have been killed in an IDF attack while working to support our humanitarian food delivery efforts in Gaza. This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER.
— World Central Kitchen (@WCKitchen) April 1, 2024
Following Israel’s killing, World Central Kitchen has announced it is suspending operations in Gaza.
Israel’s assassination of World Central Kitchen workers was intentional and achieved its objective: WCK pausing operations. All involved in provide aid in Gaza are walking with targets on their backs, as they interfere with the effort to starve the population to death https://t.co/AJjJbmNizP
— Noam Peleg (@NoamPeleg) April 2, 2024
Assassinating aid workers
Israel’s targeting of aid workers is a feature of its colonisation and occupation of Palestine. Israel has killed 173 UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) staff since 7 October.
And during a previous escalation of violence in 2009, it bombed UN headquarters in Gaza in one of numerous incidents of attacking UN staff or facilities at the time.
Israel’s colonial endeavour in the Middle East goes back to 1948 when it took the majority of Palestine and named it Israel. Most of the people in Gaza are already refugees from elsewhere in former Palestine.
Now Israel is displacing them again, forcing over 1.5 million Palestinians into shelters in the south Gazan city of Rafah.
Against this backdrop, it is targetting and killing international aid workers trying to help. The message is clear: do not assist the Palestinians and let us continue to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland.
We cannot let them get away with this.
Featured image via NBC News – YouTube
