Celebrity chef José Andrés was using anti-Israel clichés even before the tragic killing of seven workers from his World Central Kitchen (WCK) on Tuesday, and they do not help the situation any more now than they did before the event.
Just hours before the terrible accident, the Wall Street Journal happened to run a profile of Andrés, in which it noted his relief efforts in Gaza, as well as the fact that WCK had helped Israelis in the aftermath of the October 7 atttacks.
However, it also quoted Andrés making the false accusation in March that Israel should “stop killing children, targeting humanitarian volunteers and press.” Israel has never targeted children, volunteers, or journalists.
Andrés appeared to have been taken in by anti-Israel coverage in the mainstream media, or by pressure from radical anti-Israel activists, who single out anyone perceived to be supporting Israel, as Andrés did at the start of the conflict.
In the aftermath of the inadvertent Israeli strike on a WCK aid convoy — which was moving through Gaza in the middle of the night, making it harder to identify — Andrés tweeted that Israel should “stop this indiscriminate killing… stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
Again, there was no basis for any of his accusations. Israel has allowed virtually unlimited supplies of aid into Gaza.
On Wednesday, Andrés wrote an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper in which he said that the way in which Israel was conducting the war was beneath it. “[T]t’s time for the best of Israel to show up. You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza. You cannot win this war by starving an entire population,” he said, again repeating false accusations of indiscriminate killing — a phrase used by President Joe Biden in December — and starvation.
Earlier this week, Israel wrapped up an operation in Shifa Hospital in which it killed 200 terrorists who had hidden there, and arrested over 500, without a single civilian casualty and without hurting any doctors, patients, or staff. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) makes mistakes, as any military does, but it takes exceptional precautions to avoid hurting civilians, and it is doing the best it can to provide aid to Gaza, though Hamas is thought to steal most of it.
The question that Andrés and the world never ask is why aid needs to be delivered into Gaza at all — why Palestinian civilians are not allowed to evacuate outside Gaza, on a temporary basis, where they can receive food and aid directly. The answer is that the Arab and Muslim world are hostile to Palestinians, and ideologically committed to the idea that no Arab can leave their land, lest Israel claim it for itself. The Arab and Muslim world prefers Palestinians to suffer.
The blame for the suffering of Palestinian civilians belongs first and foremost to Hamas, which began the war, and still holds Israeli hostages. It is beyond comprehension that Israel is required to care for civilians in enemy territory, many of whom still support the terrorist organization that started the war. The fact that Palestinians are thus spared from the political consequences of their destructive choices perpetuates the conflict from generation to generation.
The idea that a different Israeli government would somehow have fought differently — a fiction sustained by the current Israeli opposition, which echoes the rhetoric of the U.S. Democratic Party — is absurd. If anything, the Netanyahu government has been too restrained, waiting two months to finish Hamas in Rafah. Andrés and the world will be able to deliver food safely in Gaza when Hamas is defeated and gone. That is the only humanitarian solution.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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