José Andrés at an event in New York City in March. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
By Brad Ryan in Washington DC, for ABC News
José Andrés is the ultimate Washington celebrity chef.
DC politicos regularly dine alongside everyday Washingtonians in his restaurants, which span the world's cuisines and encourage small-plate sharing.
And like most players in this city, he's also long been tangled in US politics.
Donald Trump sued him for pulling out of a restaurant deal, after the chef took exception to comments Trump made about Mexicans on the campaign trail.
Nancy Pelosi nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, for "not only conquering hunger but spreading hope".
And Joe Biden, who has volunteered in his Washington kitchen, has described him as a friend.
Andrés is a man with so much influence - in Washington and beyond - that Time Magazine has twice named him among the 100 most influential people in the world. "The man is capable of anything," fellow chef Anthony Bourdain wrote when he profiled Andrés for the magazine's 2012 list.
Now - after seven people working for the charity he founded, World Central Kitchen, were killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza - Andrés is furious.
"This was not just a bad luck situation where, 'oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place'," he said.
"[It was] very clear who we are and what we do."
Killings highlight ongoing questions
Australian aid worker Lalzawmi 'Zomi' Frankcom who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Photo: Supplied/Screenshot
The circumstances in which multiple Israeli strikes killed Australian Zomi Frankcom and her WCK colleagues have sparked worldwide anger. For the first time during this war, US President Joe Biden said he was "outraged" with Israel.
The circumstances have also highlighted some of the big questions around the approximately 200 aid worker deaths in Gaza.
The seven WCK workers were killed while travelling through a deconflicted zone, on a road designated for the safe passage of aid.
They were in clearly marked vehicles, each of which was hit.
They had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military, the IDF.
And yet, as Andrés puts it, the group was "targeted systematically, car by car".
"What I know is that we were targeted deliberately non-stop until everybody was dead," Andrés told Reuters.
Pattern of deaths
A car WCK staff were travelling at the time of the attack. Photo: YASSER QUDIHE
The IDF blamed a "mistake that followed a misidentification". Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised an investigation, and to "do everything to ensure it does not happen again".
He also said, "This happens in wartime".
That's true of this war, but protocols are meant to prevent it. The aid worker death toll in Gaza is unusually large.
It's higher than the total number of aid workers killed around the world in any single year since at least 1997, which is when the Aid Worker Security Database's published figures date back to.
The UN says it's never seen its humanitarian staff killed at a rate close to this, in any conflict.
The WCK deaths have received extra attention because of the nationalities of the victims, but other aid agencies say they've lost staff - many of them Palestinian - despite doing everything right and coordinating movements with the IDF.
They include UN agency UNRWA and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which provides ambulance services.
The Israeli government says "the idea that we are targeting aid convoys is nothing short of nonsense".
But as Biden's national security spokesman, John Kirby, conceded this week, the WCK killings are "emblematic of a bigger problem".
There's a pattern of aid workers being killed in Israeli strikes, despite deconfliction protocols that are supposed to keep them safe.
Aid barriers
Palestinians gather to receive food at a donation point in Rafah. Photo: Middle East Images via AFP
Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Gaza residents "are no longer facing only a risk of famine … but that famine is setting in". The situation in the north is particularly dire.
Aid agencies say getting food in has been not only dangerous, but difficult, with Israeli checks at border crossings tying things up in red tape. "The level of barriers being put in place to hamper humanitarian assistance - we've never seen anything like it," Save the Children recently said.
Israel denies holding up aid, but says careful checks are important to prevent weapons reaching Hamas. It says it's made improvements and more trucks are getting in.
In March, about 150 trucks a day managed to get through IDF checks and into Gaza - an increase on previous months, but only about a quarter of what's needed.
The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, and the UN's top human rights official, Volker Turk, have joined credible human rights groups that say there's strong evidence Israel's using starvation as a weapon of war.
The world court ordered Israel to take steps to ensure aid could get into Gaza unhindered, and ensure its military does not breach international law on genocide, "including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance".
But things are now only likely to get worse.
UNRWA had been the most effective distributor of aid, but it's been hobbled. Israel's refusing to work with it after accusing a group of its staff of involvement in the 7 October attack.
That had left groups like WCK to try to fill a huge hole.
But WCK has now suspended its operations in Gaza. The UAE, which finances the sea shipments, has also hit pause.
American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), which says it's been providing an average of 150,000 meals daily since 7 October, has also stopped operations.
"The blatant nature of the attack on WCK's convoy has proven that aid workers are currently under attack," an ANERA spokesperson told AP.
Biden's phone calls
Chef Jose Andres with US President Joe Biden at an event in Poland in 2022. Photo: AFP
After learning the World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed this week, Biden called Andrés.
According to the White House, Biden expressed his heartbreak, praised the charity's work, and "conveyed he will make clear to Israel that humanitarian aid workers must be protected".
What Andrés said to Biden on the phone call remains private. But today, WCK called for an investigation to be conducted independent of Israel, and asked Israel to preserve all relevant evidence. It's called for support from the US, as well as Australia and other governments, to back its demand
Biden's also under growing pressure, including from some within his party, for strict conditions to be placed on weapons supplied to Israel. There are more calls for US military aid to be cut completely.
But The Washington Post today revealed his administration approved transferring thousands more bombs to Israel the same day the aid workers were killed, apparently sometime before the deadly strikes.
Biden made another phone call today, this time to Benjamin Netanyahu.
He "emphasised that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable", according to a White House read-out of the call. He said Israel must announce and implement steps to protect civilians and aid workers.
"He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action on these steps," the White House said.
Speaking at the White House afterwards, John Kirby said the call was a direct result of the strikes on WCK and other aid convoys.
"The president felt strongly that it was time to talk to Prime Minister Netanyahu about his concerns," he said.
This is also part of a pattern. Biden has frequently voiced frustration with Netanyahu and Israel, and regularly stepped up his rhetoric, but there's little evidence any of it has proven persuasive.
Kirby hinted Biden got some sort of assurance this time. "We expect that there will be some announcements coming from Israel in the coming hours and days," he said.
Ultimatums and announcements on their own mean nothing, though. The big test will be whether anything on either leader's side actually changes, or we just keep hearing more talk.
- This story was first published by the ABC
