White House “outraged” at Israel’s killing of 7 aid workers
“We were outraged to learn of an IDF strike that killed a number of civilian humanitarian workers yesterday from the World Central Kitchen,” NSC’s John Kirby.
The White House expressed rare “outrage” at Israel’s killing of seven humanitarian aid workers from the food aid group World Central Kitchen in Gaza on Monday, after their convoy in Gaza had been “de-conflicted” with the Israeli military, and said it expected Israel to conduct a swift and thorough investigation.
“We were outraged to learn of an IDF strike that killed a number of civilian humanitarian workers yesterday from the World Central Kitchen,” NSC spokesman John Kirby told journalists at the White House briefing today (April 2). “This incident is emblematic of a larger problem, and evidence of why distribution of aid in Gaza has been so challenging.”
President Biden called chef Jose Andres, the Maryland-based chef, humanitarian and co-founder of World Central Kitchen, to express condolences, the White House said.
The President is “heartbroken” and “grieving…and felt it was important to recognize the tremendous contribution World Center Kitchen has made to the people in Gaza and people around the world,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told journalists at the White House press briefing today. In the call, “the President conveyed he will make clear to Israel that humanitarian aid workers must be protected.”
Andres said Israel must stop killing humanitarian aid workers and stop using the restriction of food to the people of Gaza as a weapon.
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing,” Jose Andres wrote on Twitter. “It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon…Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”
The Israel government, unusually, expressed chagrin about the incident, and said the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would conduct a “thorough, professional investigation” of what happened so that it does not happen again.
“This strike…was a mistake that followed a misidentification,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said in a statement summarizing what he said was a preliminary investigation tonight. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Unfortunately, in the past day, there was a tragic event in which our forces unintentionally harmed non-combatants in the Gaza strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address from the hospital where he had undergone hernia surgery earlier today. “We will do everything to prevent a recurrence.”
But numerous humanitarian groups said Israel has repeatedly killed aid workers—over 200 in Gaza in the past six months--despite supposed de-confliction processes, and rarely investigated or offered explanations.
“Netanyahu now knows he has a political problem and he's already trying to spin this as a one-off accident or aberration. It is not,” Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior USAID official, wrote on Twitter. “It is just the latest in a long pattern of strikes and close calls on humanitarian movements and facilities.”
“Humanitarians have spent SIX MONTHS telling anyone who would listen that deconfliction is broken,” he continued. “President Biden and his senior officials know it. But they've done little beyond scold the Israelis over it while continuing to send weapons. This is the inevitable result.”
World Central Kitchen said that its staff members killed by the IDF strikes were Australian national and WCK Gaza team leader Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, age 43; three British nationals working as the group’s security team: John Chapman, age 57, James Henderson, age 33, and James Kirby, age 47; Polish national Damian Sobol, age 35; U.S.-Canadian dual citizen Jacob Flickinger, age 33; and Palestinian member of the World Central Kitchen relief team, Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, age 25.
“These are the heroes of WCK,” World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore wrote on the group’s Twitter account. “These 7 beautiful souls were killed by the IDF in a strike as they were returning form a full day’s mission. Their smiles, laughter and voices are forever embedded in our memories.”
The British government summoned the Israeli ambassador for the first time in 12 years over the killing of three of its nationals, and British Prime Minister Rishi “Sunak has demanded an investigation in a call” with Netanyahu, the BBC reported.
France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné, in a joint press appearance with visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today, expressed “firm condemnation of the Israeli strike that led to the death of seven humanitarian personnel of the NGO World Central Kitchen.”
“The humanitarian situation is disastrous and is worsening day after day, and nothing justifies such a tragedy,” Séjourné said.
“Both of us agree on the need to get to the quickest possible ceasefire, to allow the release of hostages, to enable the surge and sustainment of humanitarian assistance,” Blinken said.
On why the US administration has been so cautious about using the considerable leverage it would seem the United States has on the Israeli government to curb the war, Konyndyk suggested that the Biden administration had been trying to mitigate possible Israeli military action on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and counting on getting a new hostage release deal, that has proved elusive.
“I think they’ve been telling themselves a narrative….that we just need to get to a hostage deal, and the mass release of hostages, and then we can sort the rest out,” Konyndyk told me, of the US administration. “And they have wanted to avoid disrupting the prospects of that.”
“The problem is, it hasn’t delivered,” Konyndyk said. “And so what that’s translated to is just this extended period of not putting any meaningful pressure on the Israelis to really change their behavior in the hopes of leading them to a hostage deal that it is not clear Netanyahu actually wants.”
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