‘Something is awful’ with Israel’s protection force strategy after 7 assist workers were killed: Ben Rhodes

The truly tragic deaths of seven workers from World Central Kitchen is Raising serious new questions about Israel's war strategy and US support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged there was a tragic but he says unintentional incident hitting innocent people in Gaza but wck says its workers were targeted by the IDF despite having.

Coordinated their movements and clearly marking their Convoy with logos you can see here the impact for your your this wck vehicle destroyed by what appears to be a direct strike among the victims a dual American Canadian Citizen and zoie frankcom who I interviewed after the Morocco earthquake and she spoke with deep conviction about the organization's.

Mission World Central Kitchen are laser focused at reaching communities at the margins um we laser focused on overcoming every obstacle every challenge to be able to serve and dignity uh in the form of fresh meals and fresh drinking water SOI is now gone and World Central Kitchen is now pausing operations in.

Gaza to be clear the work wck was doing there was nearly six months into this war no less than trying to keep civilians including children from starving to death NBC's Josh Letterman is following this story for us also with us Ben rhs former deputy National Security adviser and MSNBC political contributor Ben we heard from secretary.

Blinkin today repeating what we've heard many times from the Biden Administration that Israel needs to do more to protect civilians now this tragedy will the deaths of seven humanitarian workers change anything Ben how does the White House respond to this look Chris uh this is uh really tragic and not normal um I think we have.

To say that you know I heard prime minister Nano and his statement said these things happen in war no they don't um this was a marked Convoy of humanitarian workers who'd gone through deconfliction procedures I frankly can't think of anything like this happening since the Russian and Syrian regime were targeting Aid workers in uh Syria in.

Aleppo so we don't know exactly what happened here and there's going to have to be an investigation so I'm not suggesting we know the intent yet but clearly something is wrong with the military strategy that Israel is pursuing if something like this can happen even when these convoys are marked as humanitarian even when they go.

Through deconfliction procedures and I think the question for the White House is we keep hearing these statements that they object to the way in which Israel is carrying out its military strategy they object to the idea of Israel going into Rafa which is the next step in that military strategy if there are no substantive consequences for those.

Actions if the US weapons and support just continues accompanied by these statements um I I just don't know that that that's working in impacting the Israeli calculus here so I do think there's some serious decisions ahead for the White House about whether to start to condition military assistance on whether or not the Israeli government.

Listens to what it's hearing from the United States and frankly from other countries around the world when they see things like this happening so Josh what do we know and again this is very early but what do we know about what wrong here what are we hearing from Israel well Israel says that the investigation that they are now pursuing is what will.

Get to the bottom of exactly what transpired here but according to World Central Kitchen Chris they had a convoy of three vehicles that had just left a Depot a warehouse where it had loaded up food that had been brought into Gaza by that Maritime route and they say that not only did the roofs of these vehicles have the world Central Kitchen logo.

Which is consistent with the video that NBC has seen but they also uh said as as Ben was referencing the deconfliction measures that they had been in direct direct touch with the Israeli government to coordinate with them the route that this Convoy would take precisely to avoid any kind of misunderstanding or miscalculation that could lead to an.

Incident like this now prime minister Netanyahu of Israel as he was leaving the hospital earlier today after undergoing hernia surgery appeared to take responsibility for this incident he said in a statement in part unfortunately this was a tragic incident of an unintended strike of our Force on innocent people in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu went on to say this happens in war we are checking this thoroughly we're in touch with the governments will do everything to make sure this doesn't happen again and as Israel tries to prevent this from happening again the military announced today that they are going to set up a joint Situation Room alongside these eight organizations that.

Are working in the Gaza Strip so that essentially everyone is in one place and can coordinate these movements uh in the future but that is Raising some real questions nearly 6 months into this War why hasn't that been done already why were the deconfliction channels that were open with these Aid groups not sufficient to prevent Israel from.

Apparently striking a convoy of an aid group that has a lot of credibility in Israel because one of the things that Israel has pointed out is that world Central Kitchen not only did really good work in Gaza they also did really good work Chris inside Israel in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th Hamas Terror attacks and so the fact.

That a group that had Trust on both sides sides has been hit and now has to cease operations at least temporarily within Gaza is really raising some profound questions about how this is going to hamper future humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip as a number of other Aid organizations that are active on the ground in Gaza are also saying.

They're going to pause their operations because it's just not safe right now yeah and Ben the Prime Minister saying that this is going to be checked thoroughly I mean can Israel be trusted to investigate what happened here I mean you have the CEO again of world Central Kitchen calling this a targeted attack the Prime Minister of Australia.

Australia lost a citizen called the tragedy Beyond any reasonable circumstances you point out this is not normal this was in a deconflict area we can all see how well marked how does this happen are there serious questions first of all about whether Israel is going to get to the bottom of this how do we get to the.

Bottom of this well first of all to build on Josh said uh a lot of a groups have been saying this for months they've been complaining about the lack of clear deconfliction procedures you had the IRC uh was hit the Doctors Without Borders uh suffered a hit uh in one of its facilities now this and part of the.

Complaints are also that there's such difficulty just getting Aid into the Gaza Strip that it would be a lot easier if you just kind of opened up uh the spigot of Aid crossing the Rafa border crossing uh that has been sealed and so it's very hard to get Aid in and it's very hard for these organizations to operate at a time when you have near.

Famine conditions approaching in Gaza the world Central Kitchen was going to be the delivery vehicle for this pier this floating delivery system that President Biden announced in the state of the union with with this is paused it's not clear how that gets in so this clearly has to be dealt with and the easiest way is to just open up uh the.

Floodgates for more assistance to get in if not the deconfliction has to be much clearer and in terms of accountability Chris I don't think you can just rely entirely on what the Israeli government does here and look there are multiple foreign governments that have an interest here there was an American citizen there was an Australian citizen.

Uh that were killed in this strike uh the US provides a lot of military assistance to Israel that military assistance is conditioned on the government that receives it abiding by obviously the rules of and laws of war um so I think that the US uh and other governments have a right to see the underlying information involved in any.

Finding that is made about what happened here because it's important both for accountability but also to make sure that Aid organizations can operate because if they can't an already catastrophic humanarian situation we'll get a lot worse hey everyone MSNBC has a new and improved app you'll get real time alerts and Analysis live blogs.

In-depth essays video highlights and the best 2024 election coverage download the new MSNBC app here's how to do it you tap on the App Store on your phone you hit search on the bottom right corner you type in MSNBC you click on the MSNBC app you click on get or the cloud icon con and enjoy it.

Sharing is caring!