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Chef José Andrés announced that members of his nonprofit World Central Kitchen were killed in Gaza by Israeli forces.
On Monday evening (April 1), the celebrity chef and esteemed humanitarian José Andrés announced that several members of his World Central Kitchen were killed in the Gaza Strip in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Today, @WCK lost several of our brothers and sisters in an IDF air strike in Gaza,” he wrote, using the abbreviation for the Israeli Defense Forces. “I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless…they are not nameless.” The incident places more pressure on Israel, which has been accused of overly aggressive actions since its conflict with Hamas began on October 7, 2023.
In his post, Andrés concluded: “The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.” According to reports, the World Central Kitchen said that its seven workers and a Palestinian driver were traveling in a “deconflicted zone” in two armored cars bearing its logo. The vehicles were hit after leaving a warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the central area of the region. The nationalities of those killed also included a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, an Australian, and citizens of Poland and Canada. They had already arranged for travel with the Israeli military forces in the area before setting out.
The World Central Kitchen, which the 57-year-old chef founded in 2010, deploys in areas devastated by social and environmental disasters with members cooking and delivering meals to those in need. On Tuesday (April 2), it announced that it would pause aid operations in the area. “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” the organization’s CEO, Erin Gore, said in a statement. “This is unforgivable.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the incident in a video statement on Tuesday, saying in Hebrew “This happens in war,” before adding that the government is investigating and “will do everything so that thing does not happen again.”