Israel dismisses 2 officers, reprimands 3 others after deadly strike on aid workers

After Israeli military drone strikes killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza on Monday, two officers have been dismissed and three others have been reprimanded. The Israeli military said it had mishandled critical information and violated the army’s rules of engagement.

“It’s a tragedy,” the military’s spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters. “It’s a serious event that we are responsible for and it shouldn’t have happened and we will make sure that it won’t happen again.”

A retired general led the investigation and found that a colonel authorized a series of deadly strikes that targeted the aid convoy based on the recommendation of a major who thought he saw that someone in the convoy was carrying a weapon, based on grainy drone footage. That observation turned out to be untrue it was only a bag.

According to the statement released by IDF and reported on by the Washington Post, three procedural rules were violated: The official coordination plan was not communicated from the top to the ground; the airstrike targets were confirmed only by seeing an armed man, which it said was an insufficient standard (at least two reasons are required to target someone); and the shooting continued from one vehicle to another when the operator saw people running from the first vehicle after it was struck.

Accounts of the attack reveal that after the first vehicle was hit, passengers fled to the remaining two vehicles, which then moved on before each was hit, one after the other, killing all inside. World Central Kitchen has said from the outset that the convoy was deliberately targeted.

The army dismissed the colonel who ordered the strike and the major who recommended it. Three other officers received reprimands: the brigade commander, the 162nd Division Commander and the head of the Southern Command. The army’s findings will also be sent to the military prosecutors for them to assess over the coming weeks whether anyone should face criminal charges for their role in the attacks. In the meantime, reports the New York Times, the military is assessing whether to move the two officers who were stripped of their posts to other roles or to fire them from the military.

In their statement, IDF expressed their “deep sorrow” for the deaths of the seven aid workers and sent condolences to their families and the World Central Kitchen organization. “We consider the vital humanitarian activity of international aid organizations to be of utmost importance, and we will continue to work to coordinate and assist their activities, while ensuring their safety and safeguarding their lives,” they continued.

“Their apologies for the outrageous killing of our colleagues represent cold comfort,” said WCK CEO Erin Gore in the organization’s response to the IDF findings.

The WCK statement also said that the IDF acknowledged that the aid group’s teams complied with all proper communications procedures. The Israeli military’s own video of the attack, it added, “fails to show any cause to fire on our personnel convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat.”

WCK also called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the killings of their WCK colleagues. “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” they said.

Chef José Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen, is channeling his grief, outrage and influence to change policy, reports the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, the day after the deaths of his aid workers, Andrés published an op-ed in the New York Times, saying that he knows that Israelis know that “food is not a weapon of war.” “Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces,” he wrote.

But, he also noted that the deaths of his workers were “also the direct result of a policy that squeezed humanitarian aid to desperate levels.” It’s time for the best of Israel to show up, he said. “You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza. You cannot win this war by starving an entire population.”