Celebrity chef Jose Andres’s disdain for red tape is one of the reasons why his food charity found itself coordinating the humanitarian effort in Gaza when seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The aid workers for World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed late Monday when their convoy was hit shortly after overseeing the unloading of 100 tons of food brought to Gaza by sea.

Israel took responsibility for the attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledging a “tragic” and “unintentional” incident and vowing to “do everything” to prevent a recurrence.

WCK began last month moving food aid to starving people in northern Gaza via a maritime corridor from Cyprus, in collaboration with Spanish charity Open Arms.

This decision followed Israel’s refusal to allow the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) to deliver food to northern Gaza after claims that some agency staff had taken part in the massive October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, and that many others had ties to Hamas and other Gaza groups.

Oscar Camps, director of Open Arms, said in an interview with Reuters that the maritime route between Cyprus and Gaza had been open since December 20, but no organization had used it.

Charity workers constructed a makeshift jetty from rubble and unloaded the aid just meters away from bombardments amid warnings from Israel that it could not guarantee their security, he said.

Andres, who is Spanish and American, said on X he decided to get involved in the maritime aid delivery after an invitation from the Cypriot government, hoping other aid providers would follow suit.

He said on March 26 that 67 WCK kitchens were operating in Gaza, feeding 350,000 people a day. Operations are now suspended following the Israeli airstrike on the WCK convoy.

Earlier in the conflict, WCK had partnered with restaurants and hospitals in Israel to feed people displaced or injured by the shock October 7 Hamas attack on the country, and then switched in February to helping air drops of aid over Gaza.

Tomer Goldberg, an Israeli entrepreneur, said WCK played a vital role in the finance and distribution of meals to displaced Israelis after the Hamas invasion, assisting the Brothers in Arms” volunteer network that organized civilian relief efforts. “They are amazing people,” he told Army Radio on Tuesday evening, hailing WCK’s efficiency, concern, and non-political nature. “They have no political agenda,” he said. “They help feed hungry refugees, period.”

War erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took a further 253 hostages. Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free the hostages, of whom 130 remain in captivity, some of them dead.

Hamas claims some 32,000 Gazans have been killed in the war, an unverifiable figure that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed over 13,000 gunmen. Over 250 IDF soldiers have been killed in the Strip.

‘Adaptive’
Founded by Andres in 2010 after he traveled to Haiti to help following an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, WCK has fast become one of the leading providers of emergency aid at scenes of natural disaster or human conflict.

The NGO describes itself as “first to the frontlines,” using an “entrepreneurial and adaptive” approach to “err on the side of feeding people expediently vs. asking for permission or following systems and bureaucracy that lack urgency and flexibility.”

“When others are assessing the situation, we are already feeding, and in the process we learn what is going on, not the other way around,” Andres told the Spanish language edition of Vanity Fair in a recent interview.

The charity says it entered Ukraine five days after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and set up restaurants in five cities.

Born in 1969 in a coal mining town in Spain’s northern Asturias region, Andres worked as an apprentice at Ferran Adria’s experimental El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona before moving to the US in 1991, where he set up tapas restaurant Jaleo.

His company ThinkFoodGroup now owns more than 20 restaurants including one with two Michelin stars.

He has cultivated relationships with some of the US’s most powerful people, receiving a $100 million donation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021 and striking up a rapport with former US President Barack Obama.

Obama’s government in 2014 named him an “Outstanding American by Choice,” an award given to naturalized US citizens who have achieved extraordinary things, following up with the National Humanities Medal in 2015.

His relationship with Obama’s successor Donald Trump was less cordial.

(Source: Times of Israel)

Richard Burden

Refugees from Gaza with family in the UK face both Kafkaesque barriers from the UK government and extortion at the border between Rafah and Egypt. A family I know is experiencing both.

Before going into that, though, let’s get one thing clear. The way to end the suffering in Gaza is an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian access into the Strip.

It is 100 per cent unacceptable to expect the Palestinians to leave their homeland, however much the extremists who dominate the current government of Israel would like to push as many of them as possible over the border into Egypt.

Most Palestinians living in Gaza already come from refugee families who fled there when they were forced from their homes further north when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Palestinians call it the Nakba or catastrophe.

The carnage in Gaza is already beyond horrific. The world must not allow that horror to turn into Nakba 2.0.

Nobody suggests that the answer for the people of Ukraine is to leave their homeland in the face of Russia’s aggression either. But that has not stopped many countries, including our own, from opening our doors to provide a place of sanctuary for families fleeing the bloodshed in Ukraine.

That is no more than the right thing to do at a human level and it reflects the spirit of the 1951 International Refugee Convention to which the UK is a signatory.

Stark and brutal
But the contrast between the way the UK treats Ukrainian refugees and those fleeing Gaza is stark and it is brutal. To be allowed entry to the UK, someone fleeing Gaza has to demonstrate both that he or she already has permission to enter the UK for longer than six months and that he or she has a spouse or a child aged 17 or under living here.

If you have a brother or sister living in the UK, or you are a vulnerable older person with an adult son or daughter here, the UK’s rules tell you to forget it.

No such conditions are imposed on people fleeing Ukraine. Indeed, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, UK citizens have been supported to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their own homes, whether or not they have a family connection. Rightly so.

Nothing forces the UK government to behave like this. It is a deliberate policy decision on its part

When questioned in parliament about all this, UK ministers often say they will look at individual cases of Palestinians fleeing Gaza which MPs bring to their attention. So far, however, there is scant evidence that their words mean very much in practice.

Nothing forces the UK government to behave like this. It is a deliberate policy decision on its part and it is time for ministers to change course.

Many MPs and Members of the House of Lords from different parties have signed an open letter to the Home Secretary from Baroness Bennett urging the introduction of Palestinian visa scheme modelled on Homes for Ukraine.

Two motions along similar lines have also been tabled in the House of Commons.

All these efforts deserve our support. They also deserve action, not just words, from UK ministers.

Extortion
But these things are only part of the story. To get out of Gaza in the first place, Palestinian refugees have to be allowed to pass through the crossing between Rafah and Egypt’s Sinai desert.

Although the border is directly administered by Egypt, Israel also has a big say over who is allowed through the Rafah crossing and who is not. There has been no other way out of Gaza since 7 October.

Palestinians trying to get to the UK must first get their names onto a list provided to the Egyptian and Israeli authorities by the UK consulate general in Jerusalem. If you are not a UK national or otherwise satisfy the UK government’s restrictive visa rules, you won’t get on that list.

Even if the UK does put you on the list, permission to cross at Rafah from the Egyptian and Israeli authorities is not guaranteed.

Having got onto the UK list, or if you are a Palestinian trying to get to any other country, you will also be charged a huge fee to be physically allowed through the Rafah crossing. Members of a Palestinian family I know were recently charged nearly £9,000 for a mother and her children to cross into Egypt.

I know of families who have faced demands for even larger amounts of cash. My friends were lucky enough to have had access to that kind of money. It would be simply beyond the reach of most Palestinians in Gaza – a strip of land that was ravaged by poverty long before Israel’s latest invasion and which has had no functioning economy at all for the past six months of war.

Nobody seems to know how much of the money demanded from Palestinians at the Rafah crossing is made up of official Egyptian government charges and how much is down to corruption at the border.

Either way, it is extortion directed against people who have already lived through unspeakable horrors in Gaza.

Not only must the UK government lift the brutal barriers it puts in the way of Palestinian refugees seeking sanctuary in the UK, particularly when they have family or other connections here. It must also, together with other countries, put demonstrable pressure on Egypt to stop the extortion at Rafah – whether it arises from official exit fees or the actions of corrupt officials.

Common decency requires nothing less.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Niamh Kennedy and Eoin McSweeney, CNN

Ireland has become the latest nation to say it will intervene in the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in a reflection of the country’s long-standing position of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Ireland announced this week it would file its intervention, adding to growing international pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to dial back its devastating assault on Gaza and end severe restrictions on food aid pushing Palestinians toward famine.

In a speech on Wednesday, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said that both the Hamas October 7 attack in Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza “represents the blatant violation of international law on a mass scale.”

The case was brought to the ICJ by South Africa, and in an initial ruling in January, the court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, but stopped short of accusing it of genocide.

According to reports, Ireland is expected to include in its intervention the argument that Israel’s blocking of food aid to Gaza could be considered an act of genocide.

A ‘shared colonial experience’
Ireland’s position on the Israel-Hamas conflict has made it an outlier among European governments. Zoë Lawlor, who leads the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), said there was “deep empathy and sympathy in Ireland with Palestinian people.”

That solidarity is largely born out of a shared experience of subjugation by an occupying state. The island nation was under English and then British rule for more than 800 years, after Anglo-Norman invaders seized huge stretches of land from the native Irish in the 12th Century.

“Ireland was Britain’s oldest colony,” said Jane Ohlmeyer, a history professor at Trinity College Dublin, pointing out that Ireland was unlike other Western European states, many of which were themselves imperial powers.

“But like Palestine, (Ireland) had direct and sustained experience of imperialism,” she said. That “shared colonial experience” between the Irish and Palestinians “has undoubtedly shaped how people from Ireland engage with post-colonial conflicts.”

While under British control, Ireland was often subjected to violent and discriminatory rule from London, most infamously with the Great Potato Famine in the 1840s, during which roughly 1 million people are estimated to have died from hunger after the potato crop repeatedly failed. The failure of the British government to adequately help the starving population forced over 1 million more to emigrate.

Leo Varadkar, who recently resigned as prime minister of Ireland, alluded to that during St. Patrick’s Day commemorations at the White House this month, when he drew parallels between the Irish and Palestinian experiences.

“Leaders often ask me why the Irish have such empathy for the Palestinian people. And the answer is simple: We see our history in their eyes,” Varadkar said. “A story of displacement, of dispossession, national identity questioned or denied, forced emigration, discrimination, and now, hunger.”

Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, the Palestinian ambassador to Ireland, says Irish support comes from a history of shared experiences.

“This historical background that the Irish people themselves endured… they know exactly what’s the meaning of occupation, colonization, oppression, dispossession,” she told CNN. The Irish “know how the Palestinians feel when now we reach this degree” of hunger.

NGOs and top international human rights officials have warned that Israel’s restrictions on the entry of food aid will tip Gaza into famine. This month, the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, said the practice may amount to using starvation as a weapon of war.

After many failed attempts to regain its sovereignty, both violent and peaceful, Ireland was partitioned by the British in 1921. Part of the province of Ulster in the north of the island remained in the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The remaining territory left the union a year later, becoming known as the Irish Free State and later the Republic of Ireland.

Ohlmeyer contends that Ireland “provided the template for partition” in historic Palestine in 1948.

Both partitions were created largely along religious lines. Ulster was famously referred to as a “Protestant state for a Protestant people” after its inception in 1921. In 1917, the British government declared there should be “a national home for the Jewish people” within historic Palestine. The United Nations presented a plan in 1947 to partition the land between Arabs and Jews, which the Palestinians rejected.

Ronald Storrs, the first British governor of Jerusalem, described the plan for a Jewish homeland in Palestine as “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

Decades later, it was the Israeli occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine from 1967 onward that “consolidated Irish political and popular opinion behind the Palestinian cause,” author and historian Seán Gannon told CNN.

During and after the 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, the Palestinians’ struggle for liberation was seen by its residents through the prism of their own conflict. Republican Irish nationalists, campaigning to split from the UK, generally sympathized with Palestinians. British loyalists and unionists in Northern Ireland typically sided with Israel.

In 1980, the Republic of Ireland became the first European Union member to declare a need for an independent Palestinian state and has since pushed for a two-state solution. The Irish government describes peace in the Middle East as a “key foreign policy priority” and blames Israeli policies for “making peace more and more difficult to achieve.”

Palestinians a ‘domestic issue’ in Ireland
Ireland consistently criticized Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza before the Hamas attacks on October 7, and since then, politicians and the public have expressed concern over what has been largely viewed as a heavy-handed Israeli response.

Simon Harris, the country’s new prime minister, is unlikely to take a softer stance. Ireland’s youngest-ever leader highlighted the impact of the war on children in a speech to parliament in November, remarking: “You cannot build peace on the mass graves of children.”

Israel has not shied away from firing back at Ireland. Its heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu, said in November that Palestinians in Gaza “can go to Ireland or deserts,” among other incendiary comments that Netanyahu has tried to distance himself from. In February, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, said in an interview with radio station Newstalk that she only heard a “one-sided view, portraying Israel as the only villain.”

When Emily Hand, an Irish-Israeli girl, was released by Hamas after being held hostage for 50 days, Varadkar’s subsequent post on X saying she had been “lost” caused an uproar in Israel.

The Irish ambassador was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry, with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen accusing Varadkar of losing his “moral compass” and needing a “reality check.”

Opposition parties in Ireland have taken an even stronger stance than the government, particularly Sinn Féin, a party that supports the reunification of Ireland and is active on both sides of the border. Its leader, Mary Lou McDonald, has said “Gaza cannot become the graveyard of international law,” and has at times called for the Israeli ambassador to be expelled.

“Ireland is one of the few countries where Palestine and Palestinian issues on the conflict is very much a domestic political issue,” Matt Carthy, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on foreign affairs and defense, told CNN. “There has been an amount of pressure being put on the Irish government to be in the first instance very strong in its rhetoric.”

A galvanized population
Public support for the Palestinians has been put on display during nationwide demonstrations that have been held in cities and towns across Ireland since the Gaza war began.

“Sometimes, in all the roads in all the cities, I see the Palestinian flag,” said Abdalmajid, the ambassador. “It’s something that tells the Palestinians you are not alone in this world; there are other people in this world who know (how) you’re suffering.”

Lawlor, from the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has participated in demonstrations for the past 25 weeks in either her home city of Limerick or the capital, Dublin.

“What we’re seeing in Gaza has really mobilized people to an extent I have never seen,” she said. “We’re a population that also had a famine imposed on us by a colonizing power. So, I think that’s very resonant with people here.”

A January Amnesty International poll showed that 71% of people in Ireland believed Palestinians were living under an apartheid regime, while a poll in the Irish Times in Februrary showed 62% believed Israel’s attacks on Gaza were not justified.

For activists like Lawlor and the opposition Sinn Féin, the Irish government’s intervention at the ICJ was long overdue.

“Our experience of the peace process and our experience of the importance of international solidarity and interventions has made us acutely aware that this isn’t something we can just sit back and watch on our TV screens,” said Carthy.

“I do not think it is appropriate that a country like Ireland would have diplomatic relations with the State of Israel as it would with other states that aren’t in gross violation of international law,” he added. “And I think it would be a meaningful measure that the Irish government could take to expel the Israeli ambassador until the onslaught on Gaza is ended.”

Japan on Tuesday said it will lift its suspension of funding to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA as the relief body works to regain trust after Israel surfaced intelligence that its staff were involved in Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught on Israel.

Japan, the sixth-biggest donor to the agency, and 15 other countries paused about $450 million in funding following the allegations in January, throwing the agency’s operations in the Gaza Strip into turmoil.

Countries including Australia and Canada have since restored funding to UNRWA, the largest relief body operating in Gaza, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terror group, which rules the enclave.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who met UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini in Tokyo last week, said the agency’s role in Gaza was “indispensable” even as it works to improve governance and manage risks.

“Japan will lift the moratorium on its financial contributions to UNRWA and provide assistance while ensuring and confirming the appropriateness of Japan’s funds,” Kamikawa told reporters, adding that about $35 million of originally planned funding was ready to be released.

A senior foreign ministry official later told a press briefing that Japan could not comment on the veracity of Israel’s allegations against UNRWA due to an ongoing investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services.

In February, Israel revealed the identities of the 12 UNRWA staff members who it said “actively participated” in the October 7 massacre, which saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Among the staff who took part in the attack are teachers, counsellors and social workers who worked at UNRWA schools, Israel said.

Israel has also shared intelligence indicating that of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, at least 12% are affiliated with the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups.

UNRWA fired some staff following the allegations. It later claimed some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention said they were coerced by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that staff took part in the October 7 attack,

The assertions are contained in a report by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reviewed by Reuters and dated February 2024, which detailed allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA.

Reuters could not independently confirm the accounts of coercion of UNRWA staff and mistreatment of detainees, although the allegations of ill-treatment accord with some descriptions by Palestinians freed from detention in December, February and March reported by Reuters and other news media.

A separate review of the UNRWA’s activities and neutrality led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna is expected to publish its final report later this month.

Israel has started working with other groups in Gaza, such as the UN World Food Programme, to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians instead of UNRWA, which it has said it is seeking to shut down following years of allegations.

(Source: The Times of Israel)

The Israeli parliament approved a bill yesterday that gives ministers the authority to ban the operations of Al Jazeera in the country.

According to Haaretz, the bill received support from 71 lawmakers, while ten opposed it.

Under this law, if the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determines that content aired by foreign media poses a threat to national security, the communications minister can propose to the government to block the television broadcast of that media in Israel, close its offices, confiscate broadcasting equipment, and restrict its website access under specific conditions.

Netanyahu welcomed the law’s passing, saying: “Al Jazeera has harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the October 7 massacre, and incited against IDF soldiers. It’s time to remove Hamas’ mouthpiece from our country.”

“The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to take immediate action in accordance with the new law to halt the channel’s activities,” he added.

Moreover, Israeli communications Minister, Shlomo Karhi, who led the initiative to enact the law, pledged right after the final vote that Al Jazeera would be closed down “in the coming days,” saying “there won’t be freedom of expression for Hamas mouthpieces in Israel.”

He further stated,“We have brought to fruition an effective and swift tool against those who use freedom of the press to harm Israel’s security and IDF soldiers, and who incite to terrorism during a time of war.”

The US condemned the legislation, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre describing the move as “concerning.”

She said: “We believe in the freedom of the press. It is critical. It is critically important, and the United States supports the critically important work journalists do around the world, and that includes those who are reporting on the conflict in Gaza.”

The broadcaster also slammed Netanyahu’s incitement claim as a “dangerous ludicrous lie.” Al Jazeera said yesterday that it holds Netanyahu responsible for the safety of its staff and offices, adding that it would continue what it described as its bold and professional coverage, and that it “reserves the right to pursue every legal step.”

The news network has a team of correspondents working year-round, including covering Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 32,900 Palestinians since 7 October.

(Source: MEMO)