Israel Bombing Aid Workers and World Central Kitchen in Gaza

to address out at the end. So after the second ad break, Charles will go Sherean and I will come back and we're going to address some stuff that we found in that op ed. We will also link it in the description to this podcast.

World Central Kitchen in different places. Like my longest experience with them was starting in twenty eighteen and Tijuana, right when we were trying to feed people who were part of a caravan of migrant to It arrived to write before the midterms, and what was a relatively normal thing became a really big political sort of football, which resulted in the people, remember, like people being tear gassed in Mexico from inside the United States, people being held first

in a baseball stadium and then in an old strip club, which was really gross. And they're being essentially no NGO presence at first, and then Mutual Aid presence and then World Center Kitchen. Were one of the first people to show up and cook for people, and like at this point there was a really dying of need for food.

Like I have this vivid memory of three of my friends and I are riding in a bed of a pickup truck into this refugee camp and people just mobbing for food and water, and like people would get about like not stamping on children once once we stopped, but like I was really worried there was going to be a crash. People were very hungry and very thirsty, and I had just had massive respect for people showing up and just being like, we are people who cook food.

What we hate to do is cook food, and these people hungryes who are going to give it to them? And so I've always been admiring of their work since then. And I went to Childs, like what your sort of initial experience was with them, and if you could describe like sort of what sort of work you've seen them doing.

but there was never any official partnership. Some of their comms people gave us advice, some of their fundraising people with advice. First time I ever saw them in operation was coming into the Jimish train station week two of the Ukraine War, and they were the organization feeding all the refugees coming in a bunch of people in the World Central Kitchen, and the thing I noticed was none of them were speaking English. They were all speaking Polish

and Ukrainian or Russian. And I started to realize, this is an organization that knows how to mobilize a local population in a local response as a part of the thing. And that's something I really noticed when almost a year later, I flew from Ukraine to Turkey when a seven point five Magetude earthquake went through southeastern Turkey Kardastan, and I flew into Adnanna and then basically linked up with the World Central Kitchen people in the in the city of Osmania.

And one of the things I notice was how quickly they were able to get into Syria when nobody else was getting into Syria. And the reason is because it's just chefs. It's just using chefs in restaurants in places where they already exist. Every place in the world has chefs and restaurants. And Jose Andres has this amazing quote that I really like. He says, everyone already works for World Central Kitchen, they just don't know it yet. And

I saw that in action. I saw all these kitchens transformed into you know, shelters and food distribution sites, and I got to work alongside their team. So my project, I was trying to fundraise for heaters and blankets to heat the AFAD tents in the affected regions in Kurdistan and in the Kurdish villages on the on the border with Syria, because there was it was still very cold at that time and there was not, you know, adequate

attention paid to that. Obviously, AFAD and its cronies is part of the whole reason that that incident was as bad as it was. But World Central Kitchen stepped up in a big way in Turkey, and I was really impressed with kind of their outfit. We were working out

of the same distribution center, you know. I got to a company, Jose Andres on a couple of his deliveries, and we went in to Hate and walked around and saw the extent of the devastation and visited all the World Central Kitchen feeding sites and it was just it was all Turkish people and Gurtish people who were there working from World Central Kitchen. They had been mobilized by this entity. So there's this decentralized element to World Central

Kitchen that I found really impressive. It didn't feel like the top down, bureaucratic thing I kept running into in my humanitarian work with these big NGOs. It was much more grassroots, much more bottom up. So it gained a lot of respect for me in that sense. Yeah, I think that's a really good point to make that they do have a different model. It allows them to be flexible it allowed them to be places where other people aren't.

Like I think a lot of people, prehaps like are not as familiar with the NGO world as you and I might be. Like, NGOs often present themselves in places where people need help. But it's like, you know, they have large office buildings in white Land cruises, and they have one way of doing things, and it's their way, and sometimes that doesn't work well. I can recount countless examples of this, right, NGOs that exist to do things in a certain way and don't adapt to a local

situation or culture. And that's something the World Central Kitchen have done really well in my experience, all over the world. Yeah, they graft themselves on to a local response and every everywhere that they go, it takes on a local flavor.

And I think it's that's why this happened, is because they inserted themselves into a highly volatile situation and because they are so decentralized, and because they are so on the ground, they also expose themselves to the realities of what Palestinians have been facing in Gaza and lost members of their team, you know, as a result. And I think that is part of that is there's a lot of people who won't even go into Gaza, you know, if they had the opportunity, like you said, these big nngos.

I think last time I was on the podcast Sharen, I talked about, you know, seeing these big UN advertisements in the Copenhagen airport saying save Ukrainian children when I first when I was going over there, and then as soon as I got there, I mean, the minute you go east to Leviv, You're not going to see a

UN truck anywhere. And it was it was that way for nine months, you know, INBA it was just a bunch of people with like brand new white Land cruise or prados sipping cocktails in Leviv while subcontracting with actual humanitarians working closer to the front line. World Central Kitchen was not that way. They were all the way out, all the way on the east. Everywhere I went there was World Central Kitchen cars even deep into Donyetsk. And that was really impressive.

bad guys. We're helping the victims of this conflict, and you know, we're on the side of the Angels in this And that was the positioning, and I think it was a bit of a wake up call when after October seventh he did the same thing in Israel and went and you know, gave food to the to the to the different Kibut seam that were affected by the October seventh attacks, and at first very much positioned himself as like, we're here to help relieve the affected Israelis,

which again, for like polite liberals in the humanitarian world. You know, Israel Ukraine both aligned with Western interests, Western values theoretically, and I think and then you know, suddenly the war focus goes from what happened in the Kibut sim to what's happening in Gaza. And so they went to Egypt and they started helping the refugees, and then they tried to get into Gaza. Then they did get into Gaza and they set up, you know, an effective

system of of food aid. And I started to notice while that was happening that the perspectives of a lot of the people that I was working with in the AD community were starting to s on this whole thing. People who didn't have a political interest in supporting the Palestinians and we're just kind of supporting Israel because of the default. When they actually went to Gaza, they started to really change their tune. And you see this a

little bit with Jose Andres as well. I think Jose Andres was, yeah, I mean this in terms of his personal views on Israel, they seem to have very clearly evolved. You can see very soon after October seventh, he is calling out the Spanish Prime Minister on calling what's happening

in Palestine and genocide. He's saying that Israel has the right to defend itself, and then he spends a bunch of time in Gaza, and now he's greeting everyone in Arabic, and then this thing happens and he immediately points the finger at ISRAELI says, you guys targeted my team, you killed them deliberately, and you made sure the job was finished, and that is just so reproachable. And in doing so, he became one of the only really big celebrity voices to make what appeared to be something of a one

to eighty turn on that conflict. And pretty much everyone that I've worked with in the humanitarian or journalism space has also done the same thing in regard to Gaza. I'd say most people thought my views on this were too extreme after October seventh, when I began immediately criticizing Israel, and now the ones who have actually been there pretty much on equivocally say they're the bad actor in this region.

And I think you saw that shift happen in real time with sort of the attitude that World Central Kitchen took to Gaza. All of that stuff is available from public statements, And I don't want to share private sentiments that have been shared with me by members of World Central Kitchen staff. Those are their own and they don't represent the organization. But I think even just watching the yo yo of Jose Andres's perspective on this change has been enlightening.

side right now, and we need to welcome that. And like, there are a lot of people in this country right who we need to do that same one eighty and giving examples of people doing that is good, like they and there are a lot of people who don't see themselves when they see dead people in Gaza, and that's a problem, right, And that's some shit that they need to examine. And because there's a lot of bigotry there.

But if they see themselves in those aid workers, or they see themselves in Jose Andres and look, fucking when I saw the bodies of those aid workers, right you have a tall, skinny British guy with long hair in a plate carrier with a badge on like that, That's what I look like to ninety nine percent of the world, and it's hard not to feel like, oh shit, like that could be me, and I have well, I feel like I have a lot of empathy for people in guards, are friends in guards that we speak to them on

the podcast Shearing and I spoke to them last week. But whatever it takes for those people to change their opinions right now is what we need, and we can we can dissect how we got here later, but like every minute that this continues, more innocent people die. And if we can stop this one minute sooner than there's important lives that we can save. And I think it's really important to focus on where we are, not like how how we got here right now if that makes sense.

right on top of the truck. There was or the van was a red cross, a clear red cross, and it struck right in the center. I think that image is now going around again from two thousand and six again, I thought the first time that Israel has directly targeted aid workers, and I think it's really appalling seeing leadership in Israel just kind of apologize half hardly, being like this was a mistake, and then they just move on. It's if this was the red line for people one,

I find that frustrating. But if it's finally the red line for people, I just hope it continues and people don't let it go.

What they did with every bit as admirable. But like, if this is what it takes for people to change, then like I hope that they will also acknowledge that everything else that happened before was an a trustee too. Talking of like a trustees, we have an advertising break now.

And just a reminder of how frustrating it is that this had to be the red line for people. There are over thirty three thousand people in Gaza who have been murdered, nearly half of which are children. There are probably thousands more who are trapped under the Rubble and other thousands that are just unaccounted for because of the bobbing of hospitals and the lack of records. So to have the killing of six aid workers be a red line for people, That's what I mean by saying it's

frustrating because it is a tragedy. But tragedy has been taking place for the past six months and also the past seventy six years. So yes, the video that Charles made got some well deserved attention, and I'd love for you to talk about it a little bit.

from a humanitarian trip. I mean, you know, like James probably knows, you make friends really fast when you're connected, when you're in these sorts of scenarios, And you know, I had, I made friendships while I was in Turkey that I've I've maintained, and but then my my Palestinian

advocacy was separate. You know, I'm over here educating and everything, and then suddenly there's this convergence of like former you know, co workers on this team dying and then it being the fault of this regime that I've spent the last six months trying to educate people on why it's bad.

And I posted a video which was my tribute to the fallen WCK employees, who were very close friends of people that I got really close to on that project, and it was a tribute to them and also a way of pointing out how their martyrdom has has overshadowed the martyrdom of so many Palestinians who will never get the kind of press and attention that they did, and I think it achieved that effect. The video went very,

very viral. It's exceeded a million views on TikTok, It's around a quarter of a million on Instagram, and more than that on the accounts that have reposted and shared it, sometimes without the context that I am not a World Central Kitchen employee, nor do I represent the opinions of

the organization. And one of the things that I think made that story go viral is that I did shift the attention to I said, this is a genocide, and I said, as grieved as I am at the loss of these people that I have this connection with, I do want to point out that it is overshadowing the horrendous loss of life of Palestinians, and I think that

resonated with a lot of people. It also resonated with my former my friends at w CK, who reached out to say, we appreciate you using your platform to talk about this, especially considering the fact that w CK employees do not typically are not really supposed to be making statements online about this, so they have a little more leeway with that concerning the fact that the head of the organization has explicitly now condemned Israel for this strike.

But I've had some very interesting conversations with friends of mine that either still work or connected to the organization. And that's a slightly complicated thing because World Central Kitchen subcontracts with so many different people, so at any given point, there are people who are connected to World Central Kitchen who are not representatives of the organization or technically employees, So you know, you can't say definitively this is what the majority of people in WCK f about Gaza or

Israel or anything. You know, different people have different opinions about that whole situation.

I guess there was this thing that went around immediately in the aftermath of the photos coming out of the different people's corpses that like it seemed to be mostly like tankies or perhaps people who still believe that they can generate revenue from FEUs on Twitter saying that like because these people had a security team, the security team was somehow spies, and the evidence they were working for its right, Like, and you can speak to your experience, Charles,

like I've worked with security teams and seeing people working with security teams all over the fucking world because war is dangerous and you have the thing that everyone needs. If you have the misfortune of being a veteran of the global War on Terror, you have very few outlets for your skill set. One of those is providing security for humanitarian actors and journalists, and that is one of the most pro social applications of your skill set. Yeah, things to do with those skills, believe me.

And that is a that's never a guarantee. But in all the people I've met who actually are legit, you know, security consultants or just veterans who have applied their skills towards a pro social, humanitarian proper are pretty good guys. And while I'm sure you know there are some of them who are connected to various you are still connected to sort of the intelligence services of their various countries. I think that's definitely a possibility. A lot of them

are not. They're just veterans who are trying to help and they this is a way that they can make a living and while doing something that has a low moral hazard. So yeah, I dismissed that stuff. There's a lot of conspiracies. The problem is, I mean, in the vacuum of the sort of post manufacturing consent world where none of us trust the Western liberal media, a lot of people trust stuff that's even dumber, including just like takes on the Internet that somebody pulled out of their ass.

And a lot of it is if you have set yourself up against everything that comes out of the West, then every everything that looks like a fingerprint of an intelligence agency or anything is going to ring your ow arm bells, obviously, you know, James. I feel like Ukraine is a great example of this. The fact that the United States supports Ukraine means that Ukraine must be the villain, and that the entire thing must be a CIA si OP and their spies everywhere. And I'm a spy for

going to Ukraine and helping grandmothers get their insulin. All of those things have been said about Ukraine, about me, about you know, that sort of thing, and we know,

we know it's not true. It's just that people. I mean, these, as far as I know, these were guys who were security consultants very similar to I work with a lot of British veterans of the Global War on tear basically on various different projects, some of it having to do with PTSD, others having to do with environmental conservation, some of whom have worked in Palestine and been in the West Bank. And I think Brits by and large have a more sane perspective on Palestine than people in the

US do. I've just noticed that they are like fewer ultra zionist Brits than Americans.

It doesn't stick the landing quite so well when like, you have friends and you can kind of see through the nonsense.

though my family wasn't dispensationalist. It was all about in times you support Israel because that's where you know, that's where Jesus is going to come back. So yeah, I remember, I mean I I even had like fake Passover ceremonies in our church. God, this is bringing up some interesting.

were not the good guys. And then I think reading The Fateful Triangle by nome Chromsky really solidified that. And obviously Ilan Pope kind of was the nail on the coffin for me. So and speaking of like, you know what happens in DC, and you know, American's opinions on the Middle East, most of them are dog shit opinions because most people do not have some sort of strong

point of reference to this zone. But it goes back to what we were saying about how being against genocides should be a very big tent and we should resist efforts to make it smaller. Because I'm reading through the hundred years War on Palestine now Rashid Khaldi, and one of the things that he said is how the war is fought in the United States in Congress because we

hold the keys. So as much as it's as painful as it is to try and change the minds of dumb Americans with no geopolitical understanding, it's absolutely essential to holding Israel to account. It is actually one of the

best things that you can do. And when someone who has the international appeal of Chef Jose Andres points the finger at Israel and said, you killed my employees deliberately and you're starving Gosans, that goes a long way towards shifting the opinions of the people who actually hold the keys to everything Israel does.

it talks about its chain of command for approval. And in light of that, none of the things that they've said about this make any sense whatsoever, Because if they're protocols because they're either it's like they can't decide what

they're trying to gaslight the world into believing. Every claim that they're making is muddling what they're trying to get the world to believe about them, and it just gives everyone the distinct impression that they're recklessly incompetent, lying, evil, or potentially all three.

that they do in the US does it too. But it's a bigger thing with Israel is if they have inert or low yield health fire ammunitions, so guided munitions at a five from a helicopter or a drone, and they use them to do a thing that they call roof knocking, right, which sounds maybe like you're like knocking on someone's reof what you're doing is sending a missile through somebody's roof, and that is the means by which you alert them to evacuate the building because you're planning

a larger strike that in itself. Yeah, we have this great ISR capability, and what do we do with it? We launch missiles into the homes of civilians and then hopefully they will run away in fear for their lives so that more of them don't die when we blow up that block ten minutes later. Like, it's just, you know, you have to look at what's happening, not what's being said. I guess, but.

that they hold Israel. So it's like, which is it? Like what are you trying to get the world to believe? Are you either this like crack discipline unit with a very sophisticated chain of command in an AI software that you're really proud of for targeting or are you? Is this the fog of war and you're just making mistakes and everyone makes mistakes and we should get off your back for it because you can't have it both ways. Yeah, the civilian casualties are too high for you to have

it both ways. So either you are making mistakes and too many people are getting killed and you're violating the laws of rule, or you're doing it deliberately, which is worse. Yeah, make up there in minds, I guess Charles.

And if you're looking for an org that is already working in Gaza to provide life saving aid in the wake of you know, unrubbing gone, World Central Kitchen now pulling out, Era pulling out, Global Empowerment Mission is still there and still fulfilling a lot of the same functions that those organizations were doing.

going to get into it. He says. For months, World Central Kitchen leadership censored material coming out of its Gaza operation and refuse to honor staff concerns about their work there. And even though they're finally taking a stand after its personnel have been murdered, it is much too late. So he resigned in early March of this year, and at the time he was the only staff member of Palestinian

descent at WCK, and there is an amendment there. He says that while WCK hired many Palestinian contractors in Gaza in Egypt, he was the only Palestinian with staff status following the departure of one other longtime employee, and he resigned in protest of the extensive unexplained censorship regarding Gaza

at the organization. They talk about how in December seventh of last year, they sent a letter to wck's executive team, and that letter called for WCK to join other regionally active NGOs in calling for a ceasefire and condemning Israel's blockade, as well as conforming its language and coverage of Gaza to the standard that was set by the coverage of Ukraine,

as well as stopping meal service in Israel. It got forty three signatures, and the WCK executive team declined to meet up with the people that signed the letter, and they failed to respond to any inquiries, and they also actively still served the meals in Israel well the second day of the ICJ genocide. Hearing what's happening in January.

have not been mentioned anywhere externally. Like, I think that's

a really crucial getting off point. You can have shit politics, but if you're not saying stuff when your people are getting bombed, like until they're getting killed, A, I don't know what's wrong with you, and B if you didn't change things, and I don't know they didn't change things, right, that's not detailed here, but like you have to change things if your people are being bombed, Like if I I'm working somewhere where that's sol likelihood, you know, like

if if we get bomb once and we're lucky enough to be okay, we do not continue doing the same shit. And I'm not entirely sure that they did I don't want to for a moment suggest that like this, the people who died were in like complicit right, That's not what I'm saying. It's not what you're in saying. I very much understand the desire to go to places where dangerous things are happening and help the people who did nothing to deserve this, And I think the people who

did that deserve are an ending gratitude and respect. I'm not for a minute saying that that's not true. I'm saying that this organization needs to really think about how it does shit if it wants to continue operating.

that were lost. And then three days later, Jose Andres posted a video to wck's Instagram where he only makes reference to the October seventh attack with no mention of the climbing Palestinian death till at the time or the blockades, and then on social media, Charles mentioned this of the episode.

On October sixteenth, he tweeted at the Spanish Prime Minister to be removed for her protest of the Israeli tactics, and at the same time, WCK continued to work closely with the IDF over the course of the relief response. The initial statement as well as Andre's video were decisions that were made by leadership against the concerns of the WCK personnel. There's this paragraph that I want to read

just verbatim. Much of the work in a genocide is not pulling the trigger, but instead minimizing and denying that a genocide is going on. Genocide is a phenomenon of gradual boundary pushing. Each increment must be accepted by the parties with agency for the next to be reached. Under the direction of CEO Aaron Gore, Linda Roth and quote Chief Feeding Officer Jose Andres, World Central Kitchen recklessly endangered

its personnel. Sheelflessly exploited the situation for its own benefit and actively participated in the normalization of an ongoing genocide.

less person starves, that's good. It doesn't mean they don't have to be perfect to help, but they don't get to be exemptive from criticism because they're helping, right Like, well, Central Kitchen didn't want to help us at the border in Hucumber. My friends reached out. They didn't want to do that. Yeah, I don't think you should expect endios

to share your your radical politics. It doesn't mean that they can't do harm reduction, and it doesn't mean that when they are doing harm reduction, they sometimes need your money. And in the such situations where this is happening, you should give it to them if you can't help more directly, right, But like you know, if we look at their communications, we do see them calling for a cease fire, which

is about what you can expect from an NGO. You know, we'd actually it appears that we see Hosse Andrews calling for a ceasefire, and we see World Central Kitchen saying Josse Andrews called for a ceasefire, which I don't quite know why they don't just say we are calling for a cease fire. They didn't sign that document with the other endo. It's like, I don't know if they're trying to play like have it both ways. I don't know.

I don't I'm not privy to those conversations. Right, they didn't sort of wholeheartedly say this is the genocide but they have to get permission for Israel to do stuff. I mean, now they're saying it, but after the a Trustee that happened, the whole world is watching, right, not that the whole world shouldn't have been watching from the start.

But I don't think Enjoys are ever going to be you know, it's radical that there's people on the internet want them before they're also they're doing stuff and people on the internet aren't, so you know, we have to

respect that. And I don't want any of this to take away from the fact that some people from all over the world, right from Europe, from Australia, from the United States, have died feeding people who need to be fed, because that's the most any of us can give, is our lives, right, And so I don't for a minute want any of this to detract from the sacrifice they made, nor should their sacrifice be held in any higher regard than the sacrifice made by hundreds, if not thousands of

Palestinian aid workers right, people working for the Palestinian Red Crescent, a Palestinian even that the Palestinian people working for National NGOs right, or the United Nations people who have been killed, right, None of the sacrifices it should be ignored or under mind because if people have certainly given a lot more than I have, I don't have any right to say that I think, yeah this or it changes communications, right.

I think they've obviously realized that there is no nicely nicely about this, like you have to call a spade a space when it comes to what's happening in Gaza, which is a deliberate and targeted campt to kill civilians thousands and tens of thousands of children even, and I think until we move the conversation on to one where that is being called by its name, that it's to say genocide, then I don't think we'll see that the reactions that we need, and I think they appear to

have reflected on that. I wish they've got there sooner, but they're there now, and I'm sorry that it took these people's lives to get there. But what I see from them is what I see from other endeos. They're not certainly not uniquely bad. In fact, they are better than very many indios. And they were there when other people weren't, and they're delivering food when other people weren't, so I don't want to I don't want to distract

from that. But yeah, they're this messaging, this internal conduct, like there's some of these internal messages they are traveling and like it. Again, it's just what i'd expect from any other NGO, Whereas I've seen these guys do things in many ways sort of better than other angios, but none if that messaging takes away from these people giving their lives, and I don't want to suggest that.

for the organization were in disagreement with this. I think the last thing I want to read from this art goal just really highlights that WCK did not protect the people that worked for them. It says, save the possibility of genuine and competence, the WCK leadership's decisions were not made to maintain neutrality, did not increase effectiveness, and, as

April first demonstrated, did not protect personnel. The leadership's failure to honestly portray the dire reality in Gaza and lack of an attempt to influence the genocide in Gaza via its status and close ties to the Biden administration means that they bear responsibility for its outcomes. Let no one say they did everything they could and this is obviously

talking about the leadership versus the personnel. And then he goes on to close the article saying that his experience is one experience and when he resigned there was a palpable, widespread atmosphere of disappointment among the staff and employees, and he ends with just calling on current and former WCK employees, contractors, and volunteers to publicly share their stories as well in order to force account of ability and change.