Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen Accuses Israel of “Targeted Attack” on 7 of its Aid Workers Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli fighter-jets routinely bomb dense urban areas, sometimes with massive bombs, in ways that President Joe Biden characterized as “indiscriminate.” Indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit an aid convoy mounted by Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, killing at least 7 persons […] |
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli fighter-jets routinely bomb dense urban areas, sometimes with massive bombs, in ways that President Joe Biden characterized as “indiscriminate.” Indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit an aid convoy mounted by Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, killing at least 7 persons — an American of Palestinian heritage along with Polish, Australian and British nationals. Yes, once again Israel has rubbed out an American. The organization responded at X, saying, “This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER.” It seems pretty clear that the WCK believes that the Israelis deliberately struck their food convoy. Such attacks on aid workers and attempts at food delivery are routine on the part of the Israeli Air Force, and have come to be known as “flour massacres.” Chef Andrés himself lashed out at the Israeli government on X, saying, “Today @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. 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 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. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.” There’s that charge of indiscriminate killing again, alongside an accusation that the Israeli government is deliberately starving the people of Gaza (“using food as a weapon”). Andrés, trained in Spain, came to the US at the age of 21 to become a celebrity chef and renowned restaurateur. He began the World Central Kitchen in 2010 to address the Haiti crisis of that here. Haiti is one of the more dangerous places on earth and Haitian gangs are notorious for brutality, but even they never killed WCK aid workers. Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom among five killed by Israeli air strike in Gaza | ABC News At its website, the World Central Kitchen implicitly explained why it thinks its volunteers were targeted. The site says, “The WCK team was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle. Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.” So that’s it. The cars were clearly marked as WCK, and the organization had given its coordinates to the Israeli military (in retrospect perhaps a fatal mistake). Either Israeli fighter jet pilots are blind or they are deliberately hitting aid workers. Marking oneself as a noncombatant in a war zone has long been problematic. I had friends who served in Vietnam who were convinced that medics wearing a red cross were actively targeted by the Viet Cong. The CEO of World Central Kitchen, Erin Gore, lambasted the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: “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. This is unforgivable.” Just in case Israel and the US did not get the message, Ms. Gore laid it out even more explicitly: “I am heartbroken and appalled that we—World Central Kitchen and the world—lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF. The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished.” She concludes that it was a targeted attack. Secular Opposition Crushes pro-Islam AKP in Turkey’s Local Elections  ( Globalvoices.org ) – Turkey’s local elections which took place on March 31, will go down in history as one of its most surprising. Turkey’s demoralized opposition, namely the [secular] Republican People’s Party (CHP), dominated in what many pundits described as the ruling [center-right] Justice and Development Party’s worst defeat of its 22-year existence. For […] |
Protest of Columbia University’s Treatment of Dr. Kayum Ahmed over Teaching Palestine Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | – Linda P. Fried Dean, Mailman School of Public Health Columbia University lpfried@columbia.edu et al. We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about the decision to remove Dr. […] |
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In his balcony speech delivered past midnight, Erdoğan adopted a less divisive tone than usual, expressing his gratitude to all of his party candidates as well as the people. He also said the party would fix mistakes ahead of the 2028 general elections. Unlike in previous municipal elections in 2019, the ruling party also did not contest election results, with Erdoğan, saying he and his party accept the people’s decision. In 2019, after the CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu won against the AKP’s Binali Yıldırım, the latter objected to the results. In the re-run, İmamoğlu won with an even higher margin — some 860,000 votes versus 13,700 votes.
In securing his re-election, İmamoğlu now has a clear shot at becoming the next leader of the opposition CHP as well as a likely candidate in the next presidential race. According to Sinan Ülgen, director of the Istanbul-based Edam think tank, “This outcome has certainly been a watershed for İmamoğlu. He will emerge as the natural candidate of the opposition for the next round of presidential elections.” Whether İmamoğlu will succeed remains to be seen, especially as the popular Istanbul Mayor is still facing a charge over allegedly insulting public officials in a speech he made after he won Istanbul’s municipal election in 2019. The higher appeals court must uphold the verdict, but until then, İmamoğlu remains Istanbul’s mayor.
Also important to note is that these elections were free but not fair. Ahead of the vote, Erdoğan relied heavily on his presidential powers as well as the government institutions and media. In a country where 90 percent of traditional media is controlled by the government, it was not surprising to see that much of the air time was devoted to the ruling party and its candidates. There was plenty of disinformation, as was the case during the general elections last year. In December 2023, the Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK), Turkey’s top telecommunications watchdog, imposed an access ban on 16 VPN providers. The country has also witnessed a backsliding on human rights, democracy, judicial independence, and the rule of law.
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