Hello, and happy Friday.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the international charity World Central Kitchen and its efforts to address the immense hunger crisis in Gaza by delivering vital aid via a maritime route. In the interim weeks, WCK became a key player in food distribution in Gaza, serving tens of millions of meals amounting to 60% of all the non-governmental aid getting into Gaza, according to COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body overseeing aid deliveries into the Strip.
That effort came to grinding halt this week after seven WCK employees were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Six of the seven were from Western countries, marking the first time that foreign nationals doing relief work have been killed in Gaza. These people were, as WCK founder and celebrity chef José Andrés put it, “the best of humanity.” While the attack that killed them was tragic, it was also emblematic of a much larger problem—one that I unpack more below.
In podcast news: I joined the Oh God, What Now? panel this week to discuss the role of the royals and whether the age of the boomer is coming to an end. You can tune in here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What I’ve written
As the war in Gaza enters its sixth month, I wrote about the impact that it's having on Israel's global standing—and, by extension, that of its closest allies.
Isabel Cademartori, a German lawmaker who in January penned a letter alongside dozens of German, Canadian, and American lawmakers calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians, tells TIME that a failure to condemn clear breaches of international humanitarian law—or, worse yet, being seen to actively supply and fund actions that undermine it—risks undercutting the West’s moral stance, particularly when it comes to galvanizing greater support for Ukraine beyond Europe. “I felt that we have made a lot of progress in that area, and I feel that what we’re doing now is really counteracting that,” she says, noting that Israel’s conduct in the war “is not only hurting them; it’s hurting us too.”
“It really is difficult to argue in favor of respecting international law or the rules-based order while Israel clearly is acting in violation of it,” she said.
Keep reading: How Israel and Its Allies Lost Global Credibility
Following the deadly attack on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy, I wrote about how it wasn’t an isolated incident. At least 203 aid workers have been killed in Gaza to date—a figure higher than the total number of aid worker fatalities that typically occur in a single year worldwide.
Arvind Das, the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee’s team lead for the Gaza crisis, tells TIME that while aid workers operating in conflict zones are typically afforded safe access and corridors to deliver essential life-saving services, such assurances have been absent from Israel’s war in Gaza, where the targeting of aid workers has become more of a feature than a bug. There have been multiple instances in which organizations and their staff have been targeted by Israeli military action, including one near-fatal airstrike involving Das. On Jan. 18, he and a group of doctors were on a dual U.S.-U.K.-led medical mission in Gaza when their residential compound housing, which was located within a demarcated safe zone in the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, was hit by an Israeli airstrike with the doctors inside. While the group was lucky to escape with only injuries, Das said it could have easily ended differently. Three months later, the Israeli military has provided no explanation for its targeting of the house, coordinates of which had been shared with Israeli authorities through the U.N.’s deconfliction process. (The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.)
Keep reading: ‘It’s Not Just a One-Off Incident:’ What the World Central Kitchen Deaths Reveal
What I’ve read
Biden’s Increasingly Contradictory Israel Policy • By Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker
Oh, if you’re asking me: Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t, nor does he convey it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza • By Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine
During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.
The Trouble With “the Global South” • By Comfort Ero in Foreign Affairs
A policy that focuses too heavily on a narrow cadre of non-Western states is insufficient. It can obscure the tensions among developing countries and the unique pressures—such as debt, climate change, demographic forces, and internal violence—that are shaping politics in many of them. In doing so, such a policy may also veil opportunities for building better ties with small and middle-sized states by addressing their individual interests. The term “global South” may offer a compelling but misleading simplicity (as can its counterpart, “the West”). Treating countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a geopolitical bloc, however, will not help solve the problems they face, nor will it bring the United States and its partners the influence they seek.
What I’m thinking about
This timely (and hilarious) satirical rendition of “We Are the World” from Israel’s equivalent of SNL.
Until next time,
Yasmeen