The Current - A look inside the aid airdrops into Gaza

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

For months, getting aid into Gaza has been near impossible. This week, Canada made its first humanitarian airdrop during a multinational mission led by Jordan. CBC’s international correspondent, Susan Ormiston, was on board the Jordanian plane. She brings us that story and explains how these aid drops compare to the real need on the ground in Gaza.

We're in the midst of the dog days of summer. And it's called that because during this period, Sirius, the dog star, rises with the sun in the morning. Not because it feels like several dogs are breathing their humid breath on you all the time. Can you tell he's a cat person? Hello, I'm Neil Kerkstel. And I'm Chris Houghton. We're the co-hosts of As It Happens.

But throughout the summer, some of our wonderful colleagues will be hosting in our place. We will still be bringing you conversations with people at the center of the day's major news stories here in Canada and throughout the world. You can listen to As It Happens wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The voices of Palestinians in Gaza yelling as boxes begin to fall. And as the parachutes open, they start.

to run. This was at a camp in Central Gaza on Monday. The video was shot by freelance journalist Mohamed El Saifi working for the CBC. What's falling from the clear blue sky is desperately needed aid. Where the boxes land, men and little boys, some look as young as five or six, push and shove, trying to get their hands on something, anything. I didn't get anything.

Secure the aid so everyone gets something. Of course, we feel humiliated. Open the crossing and let aid through normally. Israel controls what aid can pass through Gaza's land borders as well, as the airspace and airdrops had stopped for months. This drop on Monday was carried out by six countries, including Canada. The CBC's Susan Ormiston was on board a Jordanian plane as it carried out its mission. She joins me now from Tel Aviv. Susan, hello. Hello. What are the scenes unfolding when aid hits the ground? Well, you can see these people grouping up, waiting for the parachutes to land

and then racing for the drop spot. And it's pretty chaotic. You know, They're jumping over each other. They're trying to tear at the boxes in this case, grab whatever supplies they can and run off. Some people got a box of food. Some people were just getting individual items inside the boxes. It can be quite violent. We've heard reports of people having knives. It's a very chaotic way to deliver aid for sure.

What did you hear from Canadian officials about why they decided to take part in this mission? Well, we've heard numerous accounts from people on the ground in Gaza and humanitarian agencies that the hunger crisis in Gaza has become intolerable. We're seeing more people dying from malnutrition than ever in the 22-month war, especially children. And people are also being killed around the food distribution centers. They're being trampled with food aid convoys traveling into Gaza. This week, we heard one trial.

rolled over and crushed 20 people. However, what the embassy officials in Jordan told me on Monday is that even though this is a last resort to drop food aid from the sky, that to do nothing was simply, it wasn't an option. What about the Canadian soldiers? Well, the Canadian soldiers felt that this was a mission that they were told me, they were proud to do, They were motivated.

They were well-trained. They do drops like this all the time in their military careers. But this, of course, is a particularly difficult situation. The mission from their point of view was very successful. They were able to get to the targeted drop space, unload nearly 10 tons of food boxes, which did reach the ground. We were able to confirm. So the pilot, for example, in this case, Cam McKay,

from Trenton, he said that this was really a memorable point of his career as a military pilot. I mean, obviously, we're extremely proud. There are people that are very much in need of that aid on the ground, and for us to be able to assist Global Affairs Canada and being able to deliver that aid, it feels very good. This is definitely going to be one for my personal diary to remember for the rest of my life. Susan, humanitarian agencies and Palestinians have long been critical of air drops for aid distribution. What are the main concerns? Well, the concerns are that this can be ineffective, that it's too little compared to the scale of the need, that it creates these humiliating and dangerous races, fights on the ground for food, and that it is not an answer.

You know, we've heard of food lifts in the past, aid lifts, and these are often to remote areas which cannot be accessed by road. That's not the case with Gaza. Gaza is only about an hour's drive from Jerusalem. It's got borders on several countries. It's near urban centers. It's simply that 2 million people inside Gaza are cut off. They're trapped.

They can't go out to get food, and so it has to be brought in. It's been a long-standing convoy of food and aid trucks going into Gaza even before the war, but it's been restricted and sometimes wholly restricted in parts of this war. So aid agencies are saying that while this looks good, that it's more an optics experience for countries to say they're doing something than an actual solution for the looming and real crisis of aid inside Gaza.

You were able to watch this mission from on board a Jordanian plane and get an aerial view over Gaza. What struck you about what you saw? It was surreal. I mean, we take off from the King Abdullah the second airbase in Jordan. We're within sight of Gaza within about 30 minutes.

We spend most of the time flying along the coastline and then the plane turns slowly around and starts to fly north again and descend to a lower altitude in order to drop its payload, the pallets of food that are. going to slide out of the back of this plane. The back is open. You can see parts of the landscape of Gaza. It's much of it gray rubble. It's hazy. It's hard to see exactly pinpoint what areas have been

more devastated than others. But we've seen surveillance and other types of aerial images of Gaza before. Some areas are completely wasted. There are areas that have been bombarded many times, and they are in rubble. There's a lot of dust. We were told by the Jordanian officials, the commander at the base, that we were not allowed to actually film the landscape of Gaza outside the side windows, only film the pallets disappearing off the back of the plane, heading for the ground. Those were restrictions that the Israelis have put on.

these flights during the aid drop that's restarted about 10 days ago. Why weren't you able to go with the Canadian military? Yeah, that was a little bit murky. We were told that a condition of the Canadians taking their military transport into Jordan and over Gaza was the Israelis asked that there be no media on board. That's what I was told by embassy and defense officials. and they said that it was that concern, that restriction, plus some concerns over risk that prevented us from climbing aboard with the Canadian drop. It doesn't explain why other media have been on other countries' planes, Jordanian planes, but also a French plane.

There have been other groups that have been allowed to get on their national planes, so I can't explain that. but the restrictions were coming from the Israeli side. Every country participating in this aid drop mission has a different relationship with Israel. Certainly Jordan, which is orchestrating the current group of airdrops has a certain relationship with Israel, and they felt that they were able to, free, to invite us on the Jordanian aircraft. Susan, the Israeli military says 128 packages were dropped on Monday. How does that compare with the need on the ground? It doesn't compare. I mean, we were hearing before the war that this part of Gaza, that Gaza as a whole needed 600 truckloads of aid every day.

I mean, look, every gram of food is important in the situation. But the UN agencies, you know, they assert that what air drops can deliver can't even come close to the need. I mean, from Israel's own numbers, the last time there was a period of air drops, Over 104 days, they said that over the period of that time, they were able to drop only four days worth of food for Gaza. So that was 104 days worth of air drops for four days of food for Gaza. The day we were in Jordan, when the Canadians made their air drop, they dropped 45 tons of aid in one day. But according to Kogat, which orchestrates and restricts aid delivery inside Gaza, people need about 2,000 tons a day or 62,000 tons a month to meet basic food needs. So you can see, you can do the simple math that this is a very small amount that's being delivered by air right now. Susan, we appreciate you talking to us.

Thanks very much. CBC's international correspondent Susan Ormiston was in Tel Aviv. Hey, I'm Jill Deakin, and I'm excited to share my new podcast with you. A love affair with the unknown is conversations with smart, funny people, navigating life's unknowns with courage and candor, something we could all use during these wildly uncertain times. Me and I started to cry. And I realized, I haven't dealt with anything. My family's motto was, I'm not going to be able to, I'm not going to be able to handle that.

What's your family's model? Listen and subscribe to a love affair with the unknown wherever you get your podcast. New episodes drop every Tuesday. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Njahou, and his security cabinet will be meeting in a matter of hours on the agenda whether to expand military operations in Gaza. Amir Teabon is an Israeli journalist working for Heretz. He's also the author of The Gates of Gaza, a story of betrayal, survival, and hope in Israel's borderlands. He joins us from Haifa. Hello.

Hi, thank you for having me. Israel's security cabinet expected to meet later today. who is meeting and what's the objective of those talks? This is a meeting that is convened by Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of the security cabinet are senior ministers in his government. Along with them will be the top general of the Israeli military and some other top security officials. And this is going to be a heated discussion

because Netanyahu and the other politicians in the room are going to push for expanding the way. war in Gaza and entering parts of the Gaza Strip where we know for a fact that Hamas is holding some of our hostages who are alive. The leaders of the military, at least some of them, we know, are going to object to this idea and warn the government that giving this order will basically be signing a death verdict for those hostages because we have prior examples, unfortunately, of situations when the Israeli military began operating close to tunnels where Hamas was holding hostages, and the result was that these hostages were executed by the terrorists

holding them. Are there signs that this would get support from the security cabinet? Most of the members of the security cabinet are politicians. There are several representatives from the far-right extremist messianic parties that oppose a deal to return the hostages. and have been pushing for a long time to expand the war. We may take into consideration, of course, the objections of the military, specifically of the chief of staff, but we've heard already people close to Netanyahu saying if the top general in Israel, General Zamir opposes this idea. He can resign, basically daring him to step aside because he thinks this is a terrible

idea. I cannot predict who will prevail, but we can say for sure it is going to be a very, very difficult conversation. Does he have the support of the Israel Defense Forces? The Israeli military, the IDF, is in a way a people's army. Most Israelis, not all, serve when they reach the age of 18. Many serve later in the reserve forces. And the military eventually carries out the orders of the government. There is not going to be a situation where you have some kind of a massive mutiny against this, but the opposition and the fact that it is well-known and public

of the leadership of the army, it's going to have an impact on public opinion. There is a separate question of whether or not Israel have enough soldiers at the moment to carry out this operation because one of the biggest political crises in the country, right now, revolves around the fact that the government is trying to exempt a large sector of the population, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population, very religious people, pro-military service because of political reasons.

Amir, you mentioned public opinion. Where does that stand right now? We have consistently seen for many months now that a majority of Israelis support the idea of making one big deal to bring back all the hostages. in return for ending the war in Gaza. It's important to understand that for Israelis, there is a sense that Israel won the war against Chisbalah in Lebanon last year, won the war against Iran earlier this year, but is struggling to win in Gaza.

And a big part of it is the fact that almost two years after October 7, Hamas is still holding 50 hostages in Gaza. Almost half of them are assumed to be alive. We know of 20 who are for sure alive. And this is a problem that the government has failed to solve over time. As long as Hamas is holding the hostages, most Israelis will support continuing the war in order to bring them back. But if there is a possibility to bring them back in a deal, all of them at once, and I personally believe there is such an opportunity, that is what most Israelis want. The problem is this is not what the Netanyahu government wants.

Recently, videos of two Israeli hostages, Rom Braslowski and Aviatar David, were released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. What are you hearing from those families in the wake of this? Those were gruesome, heartbreaking, enraging videos that basically showed Hamas starving these two young men to the verge of death. Two men who were abducted on October 7 from a party,

from the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel, healthy and survived many, many months in terrible conditions. But now they look like just bare skin and bones. And of course, this only further raises the urgency of making a deal to bring back the hostages so that we can save them so that they can come back alive to their families. We've lost during the course of the war more than, 40 hostages who were taken alive by Hamas on October 7, but were later murdered or killed in captivity.

We don't want Rome and Eviatar and other hostages to join this tragic list. We need to bring them back. We need to make a deal. And I do want to say that the way Hamas is torturing them, it shows you everything you need to know about this terror organization. And this is something that we're going to have to contend with for many years, the brutality and the cruelty here. But now the most important mission is to save these people. And I believe, personally, that the fastest and really the only way to do it is by making a deal that will bring them back to their families alive.

Time is working against us on this issue. Amir, many countries, including key allies of Israel, have condemned the starvation crisis. Gaza. How is this playing out amongst the Israeli public? When Israelis watch the images of Rome and Eviatar, looking like skeletons, living skeletons, obviously the gut reaction of everybody in this country is to say, our hostages are being starved, our people are being tortured there. And this is what is attracting everybody's eyes and attention. I can tell you personally, my own opinion, I also have the place in my heart to feel terrible about what is happening to the people of Gaza, not to Hamas, which is

an enemy terror organization, but to ordinary people and families who are suffering. And my point of view is we have to end this war, make a deal, bring the hostages so all the suffering can end. But in terms of Israeli public opinion, the focus first and foremost is on images that Hamas released in a very sadistic way and show us what our people are going through their in those tunnels underground where Hamas is keeping them starving on the verge of death. There was a letter signed by over 600 former Israeli officials to U.S. President Donald Trump pleading that he ramp up pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to end the war, suggesting that military objectives have been achieved in Gaza.

What would sway the prime minister at this point to end the war? Donald Trump is very popular in Israel. The fact that he bombed the nuclear sites in Iran increased his popularity if he decided that this war has to end. And he put a very clear line in the sand and said, enough, I believe he would get it done. I don't think Netanyahu would be able to stand up politically. Amir, thanks for this. Thank you. And let's hope for good news.

We urgently need it. Amir Tibon is an Israeli journalist working for Heretz. He's also the author of The Gates of Gaza, a story of betrayal, survival, and hope in Israel's borderlands. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.