Celebrity chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés has been publicly mourning the deaths of seven aid workers from his organization who were delivering food in Gaza when their vans, clearly marked, were hit by deadly accurate drone strikes on Monday.
“The team members put their lives at risk precisely because this food aid is so rare and desperately needed,” Andrés wrote of his team members who were killed this week in an op-ed in the New York Times. Andrés, who founded World Central Kitchen in 2010 to provide food in disaster zones, maintained a tempered but critical tone. “Israel is better than the way this war is being waged,” he wrote. “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.”
Outside of the confines of the editorial page, Andrés has been more forceful. In an interview with Reuters, the Michelin star–winning chef said that the World Central Kitchen members were targeted “systematically, car by car.” (In a statement after the attack, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that IDF forces had “unintentionally harmed non-combatants in the Gaza Strip” and that “this happens in war.”)
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” said Andrés. “This was over a 1.5, 1.8 kilometers, with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof, a very colorful logo.” He added that it is “very clear who we are and what we do.” Andrés — who is highly thought of by Joe Biden — told Reuters that “the U.S. must do more to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu this war needs to end now.”
Andrés’s opinion has changed significantly since the beginning of the war in Gaza. A little over a week after the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis, Andrés tweeted that Israel is “defending its citizens.”
