Chef José Andrés' World Central Kitchen (WCK) has been lauded over most of the civilized world for feeding the hungry in disaster and war zones. Chef Andrés is fulfilling, whether intentionally or not, one of the essential aspects of human decency, a Beatitude perhaps, voiced by some itinerant preacher in the Middle East a long time ago when he said, "...for I was hungry and you gave me food...and for as much as you have done this unto the least of these, my bretheren, you have done it unto me."
I think that guy meant that the simple human decency of sharing food with the hungry transcends all the pettiness of this world and shows some exceptional greatness. But that's just my opinion and what do I know? I'm just an over-educated old man and an atheist too. Maybe that itinerant preacher just meant "Screw the hungry, feed me!" Regardless, Chef Andrés deserves some serious plaudits for the charity he has organized.
The other day, some of Chef Andrés' employees and their guide and translator were in a convoy amid the war in Gaza. Surrounded by gratuitous death and destruction these 7 World Central Kitchen workers were going about the business of saving some civilians from starvation. The convoy was moving at night along a route specifically arranged with and agreed upon by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The cars in which they were riding were clearly marked as World Central Kitchen vehicles on their roofs to make any air units of the IDF aware that the vehicles carried neutral, non-combatant aid workers.
As this aid convoy made its way along this allegedly safe and pre-cleared route one or more IDF drones appeared overhead. These drones were equipped with U. S. provided Hellfire Missiles. They also were equipped with cameras specifically used for targeting, cameras which sent their images back to some one or more IDF pilots controlling the drones from a chair some safe distance away. Because cameras need to see in the dark, these drones had either conventional lights or night-vision sensors or infra-red sensors on board to give their controllers specific information about the vehicles and their passengers.
Before we go further, let me make clear, the person or persons controlling the drone or drones above the WCK convoy could see the vehicles blow those drones.
What happened next has been clearly attested to and explained. A drone fired a Hellfire Missile at 1 of the convoy vehicles. The survivors of that missile strike got out of the wreck and ran to the the next vehicle. When they arrived at that next vehicle another Hellfire Missile hit that vehicle. The survivors of the 2 Hellfire Missile strikes then ran to the third vehicle in the convoy. When they reached that third vehicle a third Hellfire Missile destroyed this new vehicle finally killing the rest of the 7 WCK employees who had survived the previous 2 missile strikes.
The IDF and the Israeli Government have brushed this horror off as a terrible mistake. Let me ask you, is that denial of responsibility credible? Is there any iota of truth in that denial?
Remember that the convoy was on a prescribed route pre-cleared by the IDF. Remember that the vehicles were clearly marked specifically so that they could be identified from the air. Now remember that aid workers who survived the first missile strike weren't targeted until they reached the second vehicle and again weren't targeted until they reached the third vehicle in the convoy. Finally, I would ask you how utterly full of shit are the IDF and the Israeli Government? How clearly, I ask you, is it that those WCK workers were targeted over and over again.
Two ships laden with food for those starving in the Gaza Strip turned back to Cyprus and WCK withdrew from Gaza following the murders of their fellows thus insuring that more Palestinians would die of starvation, a horrible, lingering death that takes children first. How, I must ask you, can the malignant, meretricious and mendacious IDF and Israeli Government of Benjamin Netanyahu retain any scintilla of credibility. And finally, I ask you to look up or call to memory the piles of emaciated corpses in the Nazi death camps, the skeletal survivors in the Nazi death camps, the destruction of Lidice and Ležáky and the Warsaw Ghetto and then I ask you how can the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who suffered those horrors can consent to visiting the same horrors on any of their fellow human beings?
All Palestinians are not Hamas. I would suggest that even as honorable and decent Jews (I am excepting Stephen Miller who is Jewish but otherwise neither.) oppose the Netanyahu Government, so are there Palestinians who oppose Hamas. Just as there are Hamas fighters who dehumanized Jews to commit the atrocities of October 7, 2023 so there are some Israelis, the drone operators in this WCK case for example, are no better than the vilest of Nazi SS officers, non-coms and camp guards. I have spoken with and respected survivors of the Nazi death camps. I have known men who liberated the Buchenwald Camp, one of those being one of my uncles. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis have dehumanized Palestinians as the Nazis did the Jews. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis, no matter how threatened they may feel, would sink so low as to dishonor the the 6,000,000 murdered in the Shoah by becoming like their murderers.
I do find those things incomprehensible yet there is plenty of room left to rend my heart that my country, my government, my president is willfully complicit in the on-going Palestinian genocide and in the wanton murder of the 7 workers of the World Central Kitchen.
