Making it possible for civilians in a war zone to eat is a complicated, often logistically fraught process, yet one ultimately protected and respected via the rules of international law. But for the last several months of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip, this hasn’t been the case.
After news broke Tuesday of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers being killed in Gaza in Israeli airstrikes, the outrage and support for celebrity chef Jose Andres’ team, which was traveling after delivering food aid to displaced Gazans, has been profound. These aid workers, more so than the near hundreds of aid workers from the United Nations or Arab nations previously killed in Gaza, were given the grace of being described as “heroes” and their killing declared an “outrage” by world leaders.
The process of deconflicting aid deliveries in a conflict zone is a harsh, often messy, yet common reality of war.
Now, we wait to see if we have reached critical mass on outrage, to help bring about a cease-fire in a war that has killed more than 32,900 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children (according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count).
The process of deconflicting aid deliveries in a conflict zone is a harsh, often messy, yet common reality of war. While Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his imperialist ambitions with the invasion of Ukraine, both countries have worked with the United Nations to establish a narrow but effective deconfliction channel to make a basic effort to spare aid convoys. Russia is one of the worse violators of humanitarian laws, according to reports, so the fact that it is more effective than Israel’s efforts to protect civilians in Gaza, even considering the more restricted space of the tiny blockaded Gaza Strip, is in itself cause for alarm.
When aid workers are killed in the course of a conflict, the government responsible for the attack often pulls out this crisis response playbook: Immediately cite terrorist targeting as the true intention, in hopes of making the public narrative less about targeting civilians and more of a military oopsie rooted in good intentions.
In the case of the World Central Kitchen deaths, Israel Defense Forces spokespeople at first did not confirm that it was behind the strikes, then blamed the presence of a suspected Hamas militant. The IDF has used similar narratives in response to other attacks on aid convoys going back to the start of the war.
President Joe Biden made a similar claim in the summer of 2021, when he ordered a retaliatory strike on ISIS-K for the killing of 13 American service members during the final drawdown from Afghanistan. It turned out that a rush to hold terrorists accountable resulted, instead, in the death of an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children. We know this because the public outcry and media spotlight resulted in a formal investigation and acknowledgment by the Pentagon within two weeks of the attack.
Netanyahu’s reckoning came faster than Biden’s. Once it was revealed, via reporting from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that the Israeli military drone attacked the aid workers on three separate occasions — while they were operating along a route approved by the Israeli army — Netanyahu issued a video statement in which he acknowledged Israeli armed forces “unintentionally” struck the convoy in a “tragic event.”
“This happens in war,” the prime minister concluded.
This explanation, that the fog of war inevitably results in innumerable civilian deaths, makes a mockery of international humanitarian law. It’s the moral equivalent of “these things happen,” as if the killing of noncombatants is out of anyone’s hands when, in fact, active choices are made by multiple individuals to research, identify and execute a drone strike. Early reports in the Israeli media since the country launched its retaliation to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack already indicate that Israeli forces in Gaza make choices of life and death independent of a long-term strategy; Haaretz quoted army officials saying that “Every commander sets the rules for himself.”
Unlike the U.S. strike in Afghanistan, which came at the end of America’s military engagement in the country, Israel has no known plans to change the course of its war in Gaza. Even the promise of a formal investigation will not change the harsh reality of IDF impunity in Gaza today because it will likely do nothing to change the mindset that drives Netanyahu’s war. Meanwhile, the situation for people trapped in Gaza grows more dire by the day.
Unlike the U.S. strike in Afghanistan, which came at the end of America’s military engagement in the country, Israel has no known plans to change the course of its war in Gaza.
Erin Gore, chief executive of World Central Kitchen, called the attack “unforgivable.” World Central Kitchen has now paused its operations in Gaza. Other organizations have also announced their withdrawal; Anera, an organization that helps refugees from conflicts in the region, cited its inability to deliver aid “after six months of constant bombings and flagrant violations of international law,” via a public statement. “Currently delivering aid puts not just humanitarian workers at risk but also those who are receiving the aid,” its statement read.
Who is left to help the children and families in Gaza now? Netanyahu has consistently derided U.N. and Arab allied aid workers as incapable of handling the logistics involved with food delivery in Gaza, a skill set which apparently now involves being adept at dodging drone strikes. With independent philanthropic organizations having also given up hope of having a positive impact, an already dire situation looks even worse.
Gaza is facing the worst hunger figures on record, with a never-before seen rate of deterioration into famine. This week, the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, privately warned senior U.S. officials that the humanitarian catastrophe is “unprecedented in modern history.” Yet, less than 24 hours later, the Biden administration pushed Congress to approve the sale of 50 fighter jets to Israel, ostensibly to continue its war on Gaza.
The deal, which also includes missiles and military training, is technically on an independent track from how the administration is dealing with the humanitarian crisis and attacks on civilians. This bureaucratic division of managing crises is deeply at fault. The public in America, Israel and most of the world see the future of Israel and the survival of Palestinians as intertwined.
The U.S. response is now determining how a whole generation of global citizens will view the promise of America.
But the government leaders with actual power to make change continue to act as if the razing of Gaza — and the starvation of more than a million people — will be regretted, but ultimately dismissed, as an unfortunate casualty of a justified war.
