The Journal. - A Deadly Strike on Aid Workers in Gaza

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen were killed by an Israeli airstrike. WSJ’s Stephen Kalin takes listeners inside the increasingly challenging process to get aid to civilians in Gaza. Further Listening: - Chef José Andrés: How to Feed People in an Emergency  - The Hospital at the Center of Israel’s War on Hamas  - For Palestinians Trapped in Gaza, There's No Way Out Further Reading: - Israel Confronts Fallout After Strike That Killed Seven Gaza Aid Workers  - Celebrity Chef José Andrés Says Aid Workers Killed in Gaza  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Late on Monday night, three vehicles were traveling through Gaza. They were carrying aid workers from an organization called World Central Kitchen. There were altogether seven staff and contractors in those vehicles. And after delivering the aid, they got back on the road. And it was at that point that they were struck. They were hit by an Israeli airstrike. Our colleague Stephen Kalin has been looking into what happened. And they were struck at three different locations.

So the images that I've seen are of a, they're all SUVs. Two of them are armored. One of the armored vehicles had a World Central Kitchen logo plastered on the roof. Very clear to see. And it has a big gash in the roof that looks like what appears to be a direct hit from a missile or some sort of projectile. It's like a giant hole just going right through the center of this vehicle. Yeah. I spoke to somebody who's a humanitarian worker who's been in these sorts of situations, and they said it's likely that this projectile went, pierced the armor on this vehicle, went straight inside, exploded, and just basically pulverized the people that were inside.

The Israeli government acknowledged that it carried out the strike, which it said was a mistake. The Israeli government acknowledged that it carried out the strike, which it said was a mistake. In total, seven people were killed. And it's not the first time aid workers have been killed in Gaza. Around 200 have died there since the war began. What sets this apart is this is the first time that we know of that a foreign aid worker has been killed in Gaza since October. So there was one Palestinian and there were six foreign workers.

There was one American-Canadian dual citizen, three Brits, a Pole, and an Australian. Of course, all these deaths are tragic. But in terms of the geopolitics of it all, this has some ramifications for Israel. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Wednesday, April 3rd. Coming up on the show, the deadly struggle of getting aid into Gaza. to Gaza. Find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches.

Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. The situation in Gaza is dire. Palestinian health authorities say 33,000 people have been killed there since the war began. And more than a million people in Gaza are estimated to be starving. I mean, this is a population that's been under bombardment for six months, besieged, cut off from fuel, water, food. The amount of aid that's getting in, the amount of supplies that are getting into Gaza,

are a fraction of what was getting in before the war and a small fraction of what's needed to feed this population. Most of the aid coming into Gaza is being provided by the United Nations. But a big chunk is coming from one small group, World Central Kitchen. The organization has provided 43 million meals since the war began. World Central Kitchen was created by a well-connected celebrity chef named Jose Andres. He's got a lot of very popular restaurants, especially in Washington. They're kind of a fixture of the Washington scene. Any cook, you have the power to feed the few.

Any one of you, whatever is your profession, you have the power to do something for the few. But if you think about it, if you dream about it, you have the same power, in the case of cooks, to feed the many. He's been providing food. His organization is very small. There's only about 100 staff people. They work with a lot of volunteers, but they respond to crises all over the world, He's a food chef. To working in war zones, delivering aid like this.

It's a pretty wild story. But he worked in Washington. He volunteered his time at a food kitchen in Washington. And he's Spanish-American. And so I think partly because of his international roots, he had this international perspective. And he's just one of these people that I think felt drawn to help others. He's been critical.

I mean, he supports the humanitarian effort, the existing humanitarian effort, which is really led by the UN in Gaza. But he's also been critical of what he sees as too much bureaucracy, whether it's the UN or national governments that are getting in the way and not just going and doing what's necessary to help. And he's taken a criticism and just said, you know, my goal is to feed people and I don't really care about anything else. So he's very single-minded. After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, Andres shifted his focus and World Central Kitchen began delivering meals to displaced Israelis and to Palestinians in Gaza. How hard is it to get aid into Gaza?

It's very difficult. it to get aid into Gaza? It's very difficult. Aid workers say this is an exceptionally unique crisis that they're trying to respond to. And there's a number of factors that make it difficult. One, Gaza geographically, physically is a very small, concentrated place. It's about twice the size of Washington, D.C., and there's more than 2 million people packed in there. And there's fighting going on across the entire area for the past six months. The second challenge is that after October 7th, Israel closed off all the borders. And by and large, the population in Israel

doesn't want to see aid going into Gaza without their hostages coming out. Israel has been letting some aid into Gaza, but it subjects any trucks going in to thorough inspections. Israel has a very stringent inspection regime at these crossings to make sure that any aid coming in were to fall into the hands of Hamas, could abuse to, for example, launch rockets into Israel. That inspection regime slows down significantly how much aid can get in.

And so there are hundreds if not thousands of trucks loaded up with food and medical equipment and other supplies waiting to cross into Gaza. To deal with these inspections, World Central Kitchen had to get creative. When the Israeli inspections prevented metal spoons, large metal spoons for mixing the food, from getting in the crossing, they found wooden spoons in Egypt and brought those in. And so they've just been sort of innovative in coming up with ways to deal with the problems and get around them rather than complaining about them.

And the organization has tried various strategies to get aid into Gaza, including airdrops. But that hasn't gone well. This is highly inefficient. It does not deliver very much more than a few trucks could, and it takes a lot of money and a lot of time and coordination. And it's really hard to get that food to the people that need it the most.

It's usually the young men who are fastest and strongest who run after it, and it often lands in difficult-to-reach places, in areas that have been bombed, and there can be unexplored ordnance, so it poses a danger to the people. It's also just a humiliating way to receive food, to have to run after it like this.

Eventually, Andres had another idea for how to bring aid into Gaza, by sea, through something called a maritime corridor. And then they set up this maritime corridor from Cyprus into the Gaza coast. Tell us that story. Yeah, so this has been sort of talked about since really early on in the war. Cyprus mentioned, I think in October or November, that, you know, they're just 200 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza and they could be used as a staging ground for a maritime corridor. That idea really didn't get very much traction in large part because honestly, sending aid by sea is very challenging. You know, it's expensive. It's more expensive than trucking.

It relies on there being good weather. Some of the shipments that have already gone through were delayed by bad weather. And so there's this sort of host of logistical issues, which made it, you know, not the preferred route. But Andres was determined, and World Central Kitchen found a port and a boat. They basically set up this route from Cyprus where they were gathering food there.

It was being inspected by the Israelis and then shipped on a barge over to the coast of Gaza, which doesn't have a functioning port at the moment because of the war. And they basically put together a makeshift jetty on the beach, offloaded the food. And on Monday night, the second shipment had reached the shores of Gaza. And some of the World Central Kitchen staff were collecting that aid, bringing it to a warehouse to be distributed.

And while on the road in that process, that's where they were struck by an Israeli attack. What this attack will mean for getting aid into Gaza? That's after the break. This episode is brought to you by New Balance Running. New Balance believes if you run, you're a runner. Whether you're going for your first ever run around the park or going for your personal best in a marathon. Speed, strength, stamina.

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Yes. On Monday night? I mean, they did communicated this to the Israeli military? Yeah. So World Central Kitchen says that they communicated this, and the Israeli military doesn't dispute that that was true. Basically, it means that the Israelis knew what this convoy was, where it was going, and they still fired at it. So what has Israel said about why this happened? So Israel came out yesterday and acknowledged that this had been a mistake. They expressed sorrow for it

and said that they hadn't intended to hit this target. They said there was a case of misidentification. The Israeli military said its forces had wrongly identified the World Central Kitchen vehicles as hostile targets and that it's open an investigation into what happened. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation was tragic, but that, quote, it happens during war. He said the military would do everything it could

to make sure it doesn't happen again. If roughly 200 aid workers have been killed so far in this conflict, is there a point where one could ask the question whether Israel is targeting aid workers deliberately? That's definitely a question that's being raised and has been raised for months, certainly in the aid community. I think this process of coordinating movements with the military has meant to build trust between aid groups and the combatants. But because there have been so many of these incidents, some of the aid workers who I've talked to have said they almost feel like by coordinating, they're actually giving the Israelis information about where they're talked to have said they almost feel like that by coordinating,

they're actually giving the Israelis information about where they're going to be and they feel targeted. There's a sense among ordinary Palestinians that there's no safe place to go. There's no safe way to behave in Gaza. In an op-ed published in the New York Times, Jose Andres suggested the attack was deliberate, writing, quote, He also criticized Netanyahu's approach to the war, and said the investigation into what happened needed to start at the top, adding, quote, You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza.

You cannot win this war by starving an entire population. That's a pretty strongly worded statement from Andres. Yeah, I was really struck by that phrasing. This is a guy who told me a week ago that he tries to stay above politics. And this is really, he's kind of inserting himself into politics. But I think he probably feels like he's been thrust into that situation. He has lost seven members of his organization. And I was just speaking to their spokeswoman and she said,

our organization is shattered. We just lost almost 10% of our staff. And so they announced immediately that they were pausing operations in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East. I think that is a reflection of an organization that's in shock. They need to get the bodies out of Gaza and back to their homes in countries all around the world. They need assurances that this will never happen again.

And I don't think really, I don't think this is the end of it for him. I think he's going to, I don't think he's going to let this go. President Biden said he's outraged and heartbroken by the strikes and said that Israel needs to do more to protect aid workers.

Lawmakers from countries that lost citizens in the attack have also condemned Israel. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was appalled by the killing of aid workers and demanded a thorough investigation. What have you made of the response from the international community to this? Does it feel at all like a turning point? It feels like it could potentially be a turning point. It's hard to have optimism about this, given how dire the situation is and how many other incidents like this have happened

and come and gone and basically not changed much. But the incident on Monday with World Central Kitchen has really, I think, accelerated the movement of public sentiment against the conduct of this war and the way it's being conducted with so much loss of civilian life. If this attack results in less aid going into Gaza, what is that going to mean for the people living there?

It's honestly, it's almost unimaginable. That's a question that we're all sort of going to reckon with I think in a few days. You know, the amount of aid that World Center Kitchen and other groups were bringing in was significant and the international consensus was basically that by May Gaza was likely going to be in famine. This is probably going to accelerate that. Unless there's a solution, unless Israel changes the ways in which it coordinates with humanitarian organizations so that they feel more comfortable and safe and can resume those activities, or Israel decides that it needs to deliver this aid itself,

which it's actually tried to do and it's been unsuccessful. You know, Israel, it's been really adamant that it wants to finish its military campaign, which basically means going into Rafah, the last city in Gaza. So if there's ramped up military operations and a significant drop in aid, it's going to really increase the human toll for the Palestinians. That's all for today. Tuesday, April 3rd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

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