WASHINGTON-
The seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes represented “the best of humanity” and risked everything “to feed people they didn’t know and will never know,” said José Andrés, the celebrity chef who founded the organization. , to the mourners who gathered. Thursday to honor the dead.
“The seven souls we mourn today were there so that the hungry could eat,” Andrés said, reading their names aloud. “His examples of him should inspire us to do better, to be better.”
The workers were killed on April 1 when Israeli armed drone strikes destroyed their convoy vehicles as they left one of World Central Kitchen’s warehouses on a food delivery mission: Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha; the British John Chapman, James Kirby and James Henderson; Jacob Flickinger, dual US-Canadian citizen; the Australian Lalzawmi Frankcom; and Polish citizen Damiam Sobol.
Andrés spoke in depth about each one and their contributions to the work of feeding people suffering from disasters and deprivation (natural and man-made) around the world.
He said Abutaha was an integral member of the team and was very close to his family. He said Chapman was “brave, selfless and strong” and had the ability to make people around him feel “loved and protected.”
Andrés said Flickinger was a problem solver, “exactly what is needed” in the chaos of a disaster zone, and Frankcom gave “joy to others even more than he gave them food.”
He talked about how Henderson had taught first aid in Ukraine and was an avid rugby player. He said Kirby, known to his friends as “Kirbs,” was motivated to help people in need. And he said that a town in Turkiye had named a street after Sobol, in honor of his work there after an earthquake.
At times, Andrés spoke emotionally about the organization’s mission and why humanitarian workers do what they do.
“We stand alongside communities as they feed, feed and heal. People don’t want our pity. They want our respect. Our only way to show respect is to face the chaos alongside them,” he said. “We remind them by showing us that they are not alone in the darkness.”
After an unusually swift investigation, Israel said the military officers involved in the attack had violated policy by acting on a single grainy photograph that an officer had claimed – incorrectly – showed one of the seven workers was armed. The Israeli army fired two officers and reprimanded three others.
“I know we all have many unanswered questions about what happened and why. There is no excuse for these murders,” Andrés told mourners, demanding an investigation. “The official explanation is not good enough.”
The aid workers, whose travel had been coordinated with Israeli officials, were among more than 220 aid workers killed in the war between Israel and Hamas that began Oct. 7, according to the United Nations. That includes at least 30 killed in the line of duty.
The international prominence and popularity of Andrés and his nonprofit work galvanized widespread outrage over the murders of the group’s workers. The deaths intensified demands by the administration and others that the Israeli military change the way it operates in Hamas-controlled Gaza to save humanitarian workers and Palestinian civilians in the territory who face a humanitarian crisis and desperately need aid from relief organizations as the UN warns of the imminent situation. famine.
World Central Kitchen, along with several other humanitarian aid agencies, suspended work in the territory after the attack. “We haven’t given up,” World Central Kitchen spokeswoman Linda Roth said last week. “We’re in funeral mode right now.”
Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, and Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary of state, were among those attending the event, joined by diplomats from more than 30 countries, along with representatives from the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. .
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, one of the most vocal lawmakers pushing President Joe Biden to condition military aid on better Israeli treatment of humanitarian workers and Palestinian civilians, joined mourners as a lone bagpiper played
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Associated Press writers Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.