On Sunday World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés gave a devastating interview to ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who filled in for George Stephanopoulos, about the deaths of seven aid workers who were killed in three drone attacks after they delivered food to civilians in Gaza. “This is not anymore about the seven men and woman of World Central Kitchen who perished in this unfortunate event,” he explained.
“This is happening… for too long. It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems moves. This doesn’t seem a war against terror. This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel. It’s really at this point, it seems it’s a war against humanity itself.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Andrés repeated his belief that despite IDF claims to the contrary, the organization’s logo would have been visible to the drones no matte the time of night.
Minimizing risk to the organization’s workers is important to the team, he added, and World Central Kitchen was “celebrating that we had armored vehicles, finally” when the workers were killed.
“Armored vehicles that were very well marked,” Andrés continued, “that we were doing the right protocols, that we were engaging with the IDF in the way we all should be doing. Like every new minute everybody knew where everybody was.”
In its initial reporting, the IDF referred to the drone killing as a “grave mistake,” something that Andrés disputed. “Well, I want to thank, obviously, the IDF for doing such a quick investigation but, at the same time, I would say something so complicated, the investigation should be much more deeper,” he said.
“And I will say that the perpetrator cannot be investigating himself. But I will say we need more information. We need to see better quality videos. We need to be saying what was the conversations, the radio conversation, between the different officers and soldiers in charge of saying that those cars were a target because they were an imminent threat.”
“Those weapons can only be used with very sophisticated drones, and we all know that those drones have high capabilities, day and night, with cameras that can see in very powerful way what’s going on.”
The IDF also claimed they could see clearly see the organization’s logo on the vehicles because they were traveling at night. Again, Andrés disagreed with this assessment. “Obviously I would like to see high quality of the video, high quality of the images. I’m very sure that probably those logos were visible. They were white cars. That logo is very colorful. Even in a dark night, I guarantee you that those drones could be seeing.”
Later in the interview, Andrés made it clear that he believes the attacks were “targeted” but that “my humanity tells me I don’t want to believe” his organization was specifically sought after by the IDF. Having said that, he continued, “I’m sure they knew our movements. I’m sure they knew our teams. I’m sure they were in direct contact with the different people that coordinate in these situations.”
“But obviously this seems keeps happening. This breaking of communications keeps happening,” he added.
Andrés also called the attacks on Oct. 7 a tragedy and insisted they never should have happened, but did not mince words when the conversation turned to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the attacks a “mistake” that “happens in war.”
“If we simplify things in such a way as Prime Minister Netanyahu has done, we are losing all the basis of what humanity should be. Therefore, if somebody knows suffering, that’s the people of Israel, somebody really understands the meaning of suffering. If somebody should be holding the highest standards of humanity, I will say that’s also the people of Israel,” Andrés said.
Watch the interview with José Andrés in the video above.
