José Andrés Frustrated It Took Foreign Aid Workers’ Deaths To Spark Global Outrage Over Gaza

The chef said that while the World Central Kitchen attack was devastating, it should not have taken six foreigners' deaths for the world to care about Gaza.

The international community was instantly outraged after seven food aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza earlier this month. But while the charity’s founder, José Andrés, continues to mourn the victims, the chef has expressed frustration that it took the death of foreign workers for much of the world to open its eyes to Israel’s military campaign that, six months in, has destroyed the enclave and ruined the lives of Palestinian civilians.

On April 1, Israeli forces launched at least three airstrikes that hit a World Central Kitchen convoy that was delivering food and supplies to starving Palestinians facing a hunger crisis since Israel is blocking access to bring aid into Gaza. The strikes on the three cars killed seven humanitarian workers with the organization, six of whom were foreigners from mostly Western nations and one of whom was Palestinian.

The attack instantly drew international outrage over Israel’s military offensive and the impact of its campaign on innocent lives in Gaza. The aid workers’ deaths have been widely covered in the media, and led world leaders like President Joe Biden ― Israel’s strongest ally ― to publicly threaten conditioning the U.S. government’s support should Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuse to open more aid routes and change military tactics to avoid further civilian and humanitarian casualties.

Israeli officials have described the several airstrikes as a “mistake,” a claim Andrés and his charity continue to fiercely oppose as they maintain that the WCK logo was clearly visible on the convoy’s roofs and that the group consistently informed the military of their movements. John Flickinger ― the father of one of the victims, 33-year-old U.S.-Canadian dual citizen James Flickinger ― told The Associated Press that he believes the strike “was a deliberate attempt to intimidate aid workers to stop the flow of humanitarian aid.”

“There’s way too many cases now of humanitarians dying ― many civilians, women, children that the only thing they did was trying to get close by, to somewhere that they were giving them flour or bread,” Andrés told Martha Raddatz on Sunday during ABC’s “This Week.”