On a Monday in Gaza
Al-Shifa Hospital, World Central Kitchen
Al-Shifa Hospital
The story of the week is not World Central Kitchen, but Al-Shifa Hospital: On Monday, Israeli forces withdrew following a two-week siege. Initial reports from Gaza speak of absolute horror, with some describing it as one of the worst massacres in Palestinian history. In any case, as with many of the events since October 7 – indeed, the events of that day itself – Al-Shifa will take time to unravel and report. To quote a recent statement from UN experts: “The extent of the atrocity is still unable to be fully documented due to its scale and gravity”. You can read more in Jacobin and The Nation.
World Central Kitchen
Also from Monday, news that definitely caught your attention: the targeted killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers, their private security and Palestinian driver. I won’t get into the details, other than to make two points: World Central Kitchen coordinated all of their movements with Israeli forces; and the individuals were traveling in a so-called “deconfliction zone”.
While the origin of the victims represents an outlier in this case, the event itself does not: Israel has killed nearly 200 aid workers, most of them Palestinian. And then there are the attacks on civilians themselves – a recent report from Euro-Med Monitor states that the organization has documented “the killing of 563 Palestinians [...] due to the Israeli army’s targeting of people waiting for aid, distribution centres, and those responsible for organizing, protecting, and distributing aid” between January 11 and March 23.
¿Qué Pasa?
For my part, I first encountered World Central Kitchen’s work in Gaza via social media, before Ramadan began, in the form of an advert with José Andrés. The video left me perplexed: Why is the Spanish chef’s organization, which normally provides food relief following hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters, working in Gaza – during an active genocide?
That sense of confusion only increased when I learned that World Central Kitchen built a makeshift jetty (using the rubble of bombed-out homes, a macabre note I can’t omit) to bring aid into the Strip – something that was completely unnecessary, given that there are thousands of trucks waiting on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border. In fact, James Elder of UNICEF stated this week that food aid “is 10 minutes from those at risk of starving to death” and that the crisis in the north could turn around “in a matter of days” if that aid could enter. Moreover, UNRWA, the UN aid organization, is already present in Gaza; according to Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, it is “the largest relief agency in the Strip and has the greatest ability to reach displaced communities there”.
Bear in mind, before the current siege, Gaza had been variously described as a “concentration camp”, “open-air prison”, and “ghetto”,1 due to Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods and their control of the airspace and territorial waters. After October 7, Israel has tightened those restrictions, dropped 25,000 tons of explosives, and engineered famine – which is why John Dugard, representing South Africa’s legal team in The Hague, described the area as a “concentration camp where genocide is taking place”. In other words, a death camp.
Maybe now you understand my bewilderment about the affable Spanish chef and his charity – even before this week’s attack. On Wednesday, some clarification came in the form of an article from journalist Tamara Nassar; I encourage you to read her reporting, but highlights include: World Central Kitchen collaborated closely with Israel, every step of the way; and how the NGO’s permission to work in Gaza may have been part of Israel’s efforts to replace UNRWA. It should be noted also that José Andrés has long had ties with the White House.
My take, currently: The chef and philanthropist got caught up in something he didn’t fully understand, and is now living in the hell of his good intentions. Like the food airdrops, World Central Kitchen’s efforts may have been part of a public-relations effort by Israel and the United States. I admit that’s speculation, however – in the end, like Al-Shifa Hospital, only the future can tell the tale.
David Cameron in 2010: “open-air prison”; Israeli journalist Amira Hass in 2019: “concentration camp”; Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in 2003: “the world's largest concentration camp”; Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, in 2022: “Israel, with Egypt's help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison”; writer Masha Gessen in 2023: “For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time-in other words, a ghetto.”