Celebrated Spanish Chef José Andrés condemned Israel in his personal response to the killing of 7 international food aid workers in Gaza by an Israeli air strike. For those unable to find it online, we re-post it here…
Hole blown in the roof of the WCK car targeted by an Israeli
fighter jet while in a ‘de-conflicted’ zone in Gaza…
Andrés posted the following late Monday, April 1, on his personal ‘X’ account:
“Today, @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people… angels… I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless… they are not nameless.
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”
Growing opposition to Israel
The world is turning away from Israel as it continues to press it’s ‘war on Hamas’. Many countries, human rights groups and relief organizations had already criticised Israel for its indiscriminate bombing of civilian homes and businesses. The destruction of Gazan hospitals, which Israel claimed were being used as shields by Hamas, was particularly condemned.
About a week ago, Israel closed the land routes into Gaza to international humanitarian aid shipments. That, itself, was an unprecedented afront to the world’s efforts to aid Gazan civilians caught in the middle of Israel’s war.
Then earlier this week, the Israeli air force targeted a food aid convoy in a ‘de-conflicted’ zone of Gaza. The attack killed 7 volunteers with the World Central Kitchen disaster relief organization. All but 1 were non-Gazans.
Words to be reckoned with
Andrés is saying what a lot of other people around the world are thinking: Above all else, “The Israeli government needs to […] stop using food as a weapon.”
Where does the US stand?
As usual, all the US and its officials will say in answer to that question is, “The US stands with Israel.” And, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Does that mean the US condones Israel ‘restricting humanitarian aid’, ‘killing civilians and aid workers’, and ‘using food as a weapon’?
If so, that’s a very sad place for the western world’s most powerful nation to be standing. Embarrassing and humiliating, too.
And in the midst of all this, the US has announced it will sell as many as 50 used F15 jet fighters to Israel. Under the circumstances, the optics of that deal look very, very bad, indeed.
Bottom line: The US needs to make crystal clear its position on the systematic starvation and indiscriminate killing of Gazan civilians by Israel. And it has to clearly condemn Israel for the killing of the WCK volunteers.
My questions to you:
How much longer can the US ‘stand with Israel’ without losing the respect other countries have accorded it over the past 100 years?
How much longer will the rest of the free world defer to the US as their defacto leader?
And what happens then?
We may be about to find out…
~ Maggie J.