Front Burner - Israeli airstrikes and the deadly risk of feeding Gaza

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

On Monday, an Israeli military airstrike hit an aid convoy from World Central Kitchen. The IDF killed 7 workers, including Canadian veteran Jacob Flickinger, and said it was a “mistake” and “misidentification.”So why didn’t the extensive steps WCK says it took to coordinate its movements stop the IDF from firing on them? And what does this breakdown of the way aid is delivered during war mean for getting help to Gazans on the brink of famine?David Miliband is the CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian group partnering to deliver aid and medical help to Gazans. He says it’s time for a “paradigm shift” in how we think about aid during conflict.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcriptsTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Hey, this is Zombieomi and Chef Olivier. We're at the Dura-Balaf kitchen. This voice you're hearing is Zomi Frankham.

She was a world central kitchen worker in Gaza where the non-profit was preparing meals for starving people. The Israeli defense forces killed her and six other workers on Monday when an air struck their aid convoy, hitting each of the three trucks they were in in succession. A Canadian veteran and new father from Quebec, Jacob Flickinger, is among those killed. His parents are currently trying to bring his body home. Their convoy was marked, clearly marked, and they were on a well-used humanitarian route.

So, in my opinion, it was a targeted kill. The wrecks from the convoy were spread out over more than two kilometers, and the charity, the WCK, said it had coordinated its movements with the IDF. For their part, the IDF said that this was a, quote, misidentification, and President Benjamin Netanyahu said that they'll investigate. Unfortunately, in the last day, there was a tragic incident where our forces unintentionally struck innocent people

in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war, and we are thoroughly investigating it. We are in contact with the governments and we'll do everything to prevent such occurrences in the future. WCK was a key supplier of aid to Gaza, but it's now suspended deliveries and turned back boats with hundreds of tons of aids at a time when over a million people are facing catastrophic hunger. So as children literally starve to death, what do these killings mean for the ability to get them food? And how do aid groups feel about whether Israel is really

following the rules of war? I'm speaking with David Miliband. He's a former UK foreign secretary, and he's now the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. His organization has sent medical teams and is working to deliver emergency aid in Gaza. Mr. Miliband, thank you very much for making the time to do this. Good morning. I'm pleased to be with you. I want to start with the IDF strike that killed seven aid workers on Monday. And I just can't get the images of the aftermath of that attack out of my mind. Bodies still wearing World Central Kitchen t-shirts and flak jackets, British, Australian,

Polish passports covered in blood. We know, of course, now that Among the Dead is a Canadian. As someone whose organization has a lot of people in Gaza, I'm wondering how you felt when you saw that happen. Horror is the only word. Horror piled upon horror, because we know that 196 aid workers have been killed so far in the conflict, mainly Palestinians. 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the last six months, on top of the 1,200 people killed in Israel on October the 7th. And so the horror is real. For those of us at the International Rescue Committee, we're a global humanitarian charity. We know the risks. We work in about 300 field sites in 40 countries where people are fleeing from conflict and disaster

or suffering conflict and disaster. And we had our own experience in Gaza, which our guest house was hit by an Israeli missile. Fortunately, it was hit on the side. So three people were injured, but the 15 people inside could easily have been killed. And we said at the time that the deconfliction system, this is the system by which aid organizations can inform armed actors of their movements to keep them safe. We said that the deconfliction system wasn't working.

So the horror was piled upon the sense of just wanton loss. The head of the WCK also talked about how the deconfliction system wasn't working. He talked about how his organization took steps to get permission from the IDF. IDF knew of our movements. The deconfliction was clear. The route was clear. The route was clear. The communication was clear. I just wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about why you think it's not working, why this is happening and whose fault it is.

First thing to say is obviously we don't have insight into the command chain. We don't know where the decision was taken to launch three separate attacks on these three World Central Kitchen trucks. Equally, we don't know where the decision was taken to launch the missile that hit our guesthouse. The deconfliction process involves aid agencies telling, in this case, the Israeli Defense Force, into their central nervous system, where our people are, what their road movements are. It's really quite detailed what time they'll be moving. We have our own curfew of 5pm, so we don't move people after that time. And it's meant to, quote unquote, deconflict. It's meant to do what it says on the tin. Now, I think what this week brings out is the need for a complete paradigm shift in the way that we

think about aid in conflict. Because the truth is, legally as well as morally, the burden of proof is not on the aid agencies. The burden of proof is on competence to uphold the legal and moral rights of civilians both to receive aid and to preserve livelihood, and of aid workers to deliver aid and to sustain livelihood. And so the paradigm shift needs to be away from a situation in which we're almost asking for permission, please don't shoot at us, to saying you have a legal obligation under international law, never mind under successive UN Security Council resolutions, law, never mind under successive UN Security Council resolutions, which has the status of international law, not just not to shoot, but to enable the flow of aid. The IDF said that what happened with the WCK workers was a, quote, mistake that followed

a misidentification. The strike was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers. It was a mistake that followed a misidentification at night during a war in very complex conditions. Jose Andres, the founder of the WCK, said this is not an oops or a bad luck situation and that the cars were targeted systematically. So this was not just a bad luck situation where, oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place or no. This was over 1.5, 1.8 kilometers

with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof. That's very clear who we are and what we do. So the idea that it was a mistake, that it was a misidentification, does that seem plausible to you? Well, there are two types of mistake, aren't there? One is that machinery goes wrong and something hits whatever it wasn't meant to hit. And the second is that targets are identified wrongly. In this case, three different targets were hit. So it's plainly not the first.

And I'm not in no position to speak to the detail of what target they thought they were aiming at. But what this shows is that the responsibilities of combatants in conflict need to be real for them to curb the danger that the lives of innocent people get lost in the midst of conflict, especially one in which 2.2 million people are crammed into a very tightly packed area. We have our own teams in one of the hospitals in Gaza, not the al-Shifa hospital. And we have partners elsewhere in the Gaza Strip. But we also have experience elsewhere. We have experience in Syria, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, in Sudan, in Ethiopia. The guardrails that are meant to protect the international legal system, but also the lives of civilians and of aid workers, those guardrails are being crashed

through. They're wilting under pressure. And this is part of the wider danger that the world is showing more and more impunity in conflict zones. And that should be a warning to us all. I want to get to the other huge barriers to aid delivery in Gaza. To do that, I think we need to establish how desperately aid is needed right now. And I wonder if you could tell me how quickly and how deeply hunger has been spreading through the territory, through Gaza. Yes, well, the world's premier authority on measuring hunger, it's a small C conservative

body. It's called the International Phase Classification System. They have technocrats and technical people who rarely declare famine. There are five levels of food insecurity. Three and above means that you don't know where your next meal is coming from. Level three is called crisis. Level four is called emergency. Level five is called catastrophe. And that is where there is famine existing or an imminent threat. And essentially what's happened in Gaza is you've gone from a situation where essentially no one was above level three to the situation today where the international phase classification system reports that a million people are living at level

five and the other 2.2 million people are living at level three or four. So they have declared that there is now imminent risk of famine in Gaza. They've also reported, they reported two weeks ago, that 25 children have already died of famine. And you referred to this as being also a difficult humanitarian problem. It's not that difficult compared to a lot of places, because it's not like Gaza is cut off geographically, it's cut off politically, or a lot of places because it's not like Gaza is cut off geographically. It's cut off politically, or a better way of putting it, it's cut off umbilically because the crossing points have been closed, the people can't get out, and the aid is not being allowed in.

And so this is very much obviously related to the conflict, but it's actually separable from the conflict because the number of trucks it's actually separable from the conflict because the number of trucks that go in with food, the amount of checking that there is of trucks when they reach the border, the reversal of trucks, if they have any items in there that could be considered, quote unquote, dual use, the ability of trucks to move inside Gaza without hindrance, those are all very fixable, but they're not being fixed. And that is the responsibility of the Israeli authorities in the first instance, because it's their checkpoints that are requiring every truck that goes through the Rafah crossing

to go 40 kilometers south to Karam Shalom to be checked again. And there's a series of impediments that explain the dire situation, especially dire in the north of Gaza, where there's still, I guess, 200,000 people. And the situation there is beyond dire, because if you think about humanitarian need as a pyramid, starvation is the apex of the pyramid. Israel claims that it has actually increased aid access and has blamed the UN for not distributing enough aid in Gaza. Does that line up with the reality that you're seeing? Well, not according to the figures that have been published. I have the figures for January

and February. I don't have the March figures yet. But half the amount of aid went into Gaza in February, as in January. I mean, that's not my figure. That's David Cameron, the British foreign minister. In terms of the UN, I mean, the UN agencies are trying to do their work. But of course, one of the main agencies, the UN Work and Relief Administration, UNRWA, is having its funds, some of its funds, sealed. I believe the Canadians have reopened the stream after the very serious allegations that were made. Many countries, including Canada, pulled their funding in January,

when Israel alleged 12 members of its staff were involved in the October 7th attacks by Hamas. Now, amid dire warnings of famine, a move by Canada. We are resuming our relationship on funding. Part of the government's decision hinging on an interim UN report that has not been made public. Canada's ambassador to the UN says it neither exonerates UNRWA staff nor does it confirm wrongdoing. But there is a real impediment of the UN doing its business. They're investigating, that's rightly very serious allegations, but I know that the UN have appointed an extremely senior diplomat, Sigrid Kaag. She's a former deputy prime minister of the Netherlands.

She knows the region very well, having previously worked for UN agencies in the region. She's the humanitarian coordinator. She has an action plan that she wants to see implemented off the back of Resolution 2720, which was passed last week. The UN's on the case, I would say, and they're a very practical thing. Look, we have medical teams who don't have saline, they don't have scissors, they don't have scalpels. One of the reasons is scalpels and scissors are getting turned back at the border because they're accused of being dual use. Now, the trouble with that is it's also the case when a truckload has a pair of scissors in it or a surgical implement, the whole truck gets sent back, not just the surgical implement. So that's how you end up in a situation where not just operations can't be done or care can't be provided or saline, in the words of one of our staff, saline can't be provided to the lips of a dying man for his last breaths.

That's how you end up in such a desperate situation. The head of the World Central Kitchen said this week that food is being used as a weapon of war here. I imagine, obviously, you don't think the reason Israel is turning away trucks makes sense. Do you believe that Israel is choking aid on purpose? Well, it's very unclear that it's serving any purpose. That's the whole point about it. This is a humanitarian commitment that is legal as well as moral. Israel's been put on notice by a range of UN and other bodies

about its responsibilities. The decisions about the number of crossing points are clearly made at a very senior level. The decisions about individual trucks are made at a much more junior level. And they're made in a situation of war. Our point is that there are responsibilities on all sides to facilitate and enable not just aid delivery, but access to aid. We've concluded this legal right can only ultimately be serviced by a sustained ceasefire, but it's imperative that the arguments about a sustained

ceasefire don't delay the more pragmatic and practical changes that can be made now, literally now, to allow people to live. And that's what we're talking about. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Mr. Billabin, you have people on the ground there. You mentioned that you have doctors in hospitals. And I know also that your organization is trying to provide psychological support for children in schools being used as shelters because of the trauma and loss so many of them have experience. And I wonder if you could spend a bit of time telling me what you're hearing from your workers about the incredible, horrific humanitarian toll that this is taking on the people. Yes. First of all, I should make clear that the work we're doing in the hospital at the moment, this is our fifth emergency medical team, is done in partnership with a group called Medical Aid for the Palestinians who have a long-term presence in Gaza and in the West Bank. We have other local partners working

in the shelters because our model, just to make clear, is very much about local hiring and local people because they're actually the experts. And we give the benefit of our international support and evidence and experience. And that speaks to this psychological trauma that we're trying to address, especially among kids. In this, we have seven years of experience now with something called the Alan Simpson program. It's a welcome sesame program, which was developed for victims of the war in Syria. And essentially what we saw in Syria and what we're seeing in Gaza today is trauma among young kids. Obviously there's trauma among adults as well. But we know that trauma among young kids is more fixable, more addressable than later stage. And actually, if you can address trauma, toxic stress is called,

and it's the trauma of losing your parents. It's the trauma of seeing your brother or sister killed. It's the trauma of seeing dozens of family members killed. It's the trauma of seeing your brother or sister killed. It's a trauma of seeing dozens of family members killed. It's a trauma of seeing unspeakable violence in front of your eyes. It's the trauma that wakes you up in the not just the middle of the night but every moment of the night. It's a trauma that doesn't leave you. That's what our teams report of the kids. Now what we try to do through this Alan Simpson program, and we've shown remarkable results with people fleeing the Syrian War, is to create space for children to be children. We create space for them to engage with stories about kids and about lives that are contextualized. We give part of their brain an oasis to bathe in, really. It uses the Sesame Workshop Muppets, and it uses very trained facilitation, both

remotely and in person, to help parents and carers and kids try to cope with what they're going through. I obviously, I'm sure your listeners are asking the question, hang on, in the midst of starvation and bombs, what good is psychological support? I'm sure they phrase it in a diplomatic way, but it must be going through people's heads. And I asked this. I asked this very bluntly when I was in Jordan meeting our teams in February. And they said, look, it's true. Of course, we've got to stop the bombs. We've got to get the food. We've got to deliver the medical care. But this is core to the future lives these children are going to lead. And if you want to have any hope for the Middle East, you've got to invest in the young people. And this is a way of trying to assuage

some of the pain. And actually, the evidence is it can have serious impact. It's interesting. When I was listening to you, I was actually thinking how important that work sounded. Oh, good. Well, you're more farsighted than I am. Just as a mom of two young kids myself, it's heartbreaking. Yeah. And we've been talking about hunger quite a lot through this conversation. And I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit more about what you've been hearing from the people you have on the ground about what it has looked like.

Well, it's terrible. I mean, what it looks like is people who are day by day becoming more and more desperate as they and their children are emaciated by lack of food. And it couldn't be more graphic. And some pictures emerge as very restricted journalistic access and telecoms access. But you'll have seen pictures from me from your childhood of what it means for people to starve and this international phase classification group that has warned of imminent famine it's not joking i mean they're not they're not playing games this isn't political rhetoric this isn't someone in new york writing a press release this is people on the ground assessing real needs. I mean, they've said that 25 people literally starved children, starved to death.

So you say, what does it look like? It looks horrific. It looks unspeakable. It looks like something out of a, well, there's no movie to compare it to. It is obviously a massive toll on the population. And it's a long-term scar on the international system. Mr. Miliband, to end this conversation, I've seen you call the situation a failure of humanity. And I wonder if you could expand on that for me.

What do you mean by that? Well, this is a man-made disaster of epic proportions. Every humanitarian emergency is a political emergency. It's about high politics, and it's hard to shift that. But it's also about human decisions at the most basic level, under situations of extreme stress. What we've got going on at the moment is all of the pointers, all of the incentives, all of the drivers are in the wrong direction rather than the right direction. That is a cycle of violence, disaster, killing, impunity that goes round and round and is harder and harder to solve the longer it goes on. And that's what I think we're paying the price of. And above all, the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East are paying the price of. And so the failure is a failure to

learn the lessons of the past after the failure of the League of Nations in the interwar period between 1918 and 1939, 1914, that the failure of the League of Nations inspired the creation of the UN after 1945. And it wasn't just an institution that was created, a set of legal rights for humans was created to sit alongside the rights of states. You'll know that since the 17th century, the rights of states to sovereignty and territorial integrity has increasingly been a feature of the international system. For the first time after 1945, the world said, every country, communist and capitalist, democratic and autocratic, signed up to the UN Charter that said, human rights sit alongside states' rights. And that was never fully achieved in the

Cold War. After the 1990s, there was a wave of democracy, there was a wave of revulsion, genocide in Rwanda and killing in former Yugoslavia. And there was a sense that the rights of civilians, especially in war, especially to life and livelihood, were being taken forward. What we've seen over the last 15 years is those rights under assault with the rise of impunity. And impunity is the exercise of power without accountability, without responsibility. And that's the danger today. I chair the advisory board of something called the Atlas of Impunity that documents impunity across five different dimensions. Your listeners can look it up. I think the crossroads we face today is whether we're going to have a future of accountability or a future of impunity. That's the choice. And it will be a failure of humanity, not something God-given or just natural, if we end up going down the path

of impunity. David Milliman, thank you very much for coming on to the show. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Thank you. All right, so before we go today, off the top of the show, we played you comments Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu made about the IDF strikes, which killed seven aid workers, including a Canadian veteran. Those comments included the quote, this happens in wartime. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded. No, it doesn't just happen. And it shouldn't just happen. And it shouldn't just happen. That is not OK that they get hit by targeted missiles like this.

The reality is we need much more humanitarian support to flow into Gaza, much more protection of civilians, of innocents, and of aid workers. Trudeau said that we need a humanitarian ceasefire, adding that Hamas needs to, lay down its arms, and that hostages need to be released. That is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Sarah Jackson, Ali Janes, Matt Mews, and Derek Vanderwyk. Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty. Music is by Joseph Chabison.

Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.