Hamas and World Central Kitchen – Part 2

Following a tragic mistaken attack on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy in Gaza in April 2024, in which seven aid workers were killed, Israel was roundly excoriated in a diplomatic and media frenzy that lasted weeks.  Hundreds of articles and op-eds were published in newspapers around the world, and President Biden issued a special statement from the White House expressing “outrage” at the attack.

I felt compelled to write a blog post about the inevitability of human error in war.  I reminded my readers of two instances in which the United States military – and even President Biden himself – made the same mistake as the IDF, with even worse consequences.

In one case, on October 3, 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship relentlessly shelled and destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Konduz, Afghanistan – despite the hospital having fully coordinated its location with the US military, and despite a brightly-lit sign on its roof that identified it as a Doctors Without Borders facility.  At least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients and 14 staff.  Another 37 people were injured.  Despite all of the coordination and signage, the US military mistakenly believed the building housed Taliban fighters.

In another case, on August 29, 2021, days before the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden personally ordered a drone strike against an individual that he and his military advisers believed to be a terrorist loading bombs into a car for use against retreating US forces.  Unfortunately, the target turned out to be a humanitarian aid worker.  The “bombs” he was loading into his car were actually water cannisters.  Ten civilians, including the humanitarian aid worker and seven children, were killed in that attack.

My point in discussing these heartbreaking events was not to excuse the IDF’s mistake, but to emphasize a tragic, inescapable fact of war: non-combatants are inevitably harmed not only in attacks on military targets that cause collateral damage (which the laws of war permit, within limits), but also by plain old human error.  As I noted, so-called “friendly fire” is consistently responsible for about 20% of all military deaths in war.  Mistaken civilian casualties are unsurprising when armies cannot even avoid accidentally killing their own soldiers.

A year and a half later, another event in the Gaza Strip provided important context for the mistaken IDF strike back in April 2024.  On August 12, 2025, the IDF identified several armed individuals, wearing yellow humanitarian vests, entering a car bearing the World Central Kitchen logo.  After confirming the obvious with WCK – i.e., that these combatants were not affiliated with WCK – the IDF struck the vehicle.  In a post on its web site, WCK acknowledges the impersonation and correctly condemns it, explaining that combatants impersonating aid workers “endangers civilians and aid workers.”

International law has long prohibited “perfidy,” defined as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.”  Article 37 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (1977).  In particular, it is forbidden for combatants to misuse the symbol of the Red Cross or any “other internationally recognized protective emblems, signs or signals.”  Id., Article 38.  Palestinian terrorists’ abuse of the WCK emblem and impersonation of WCK aid workers is indisputably a war crime.  As WCK noted, such impersonation endangers humanitarian aid workers by making it impossible for the IDF to trust that humanitarian symbols are being used to identify people who are genuinely immune from attack in an incredibly complex war zone.

While the terrorists’ impersonation of aid workers does not excuse the mistake that Israel made in April 2024, it unquestionably establishes that the terrorists’ actions made such a mistake more likely to occur.  Yet, the impersonation was barely mentioned in the media, and the few articles that did mention it failed to note the clear connection between terrorists impersonating aid workers and the mistake Israel made in attacking the WCK convoy in April 2024.

Unlike Palestinian terrorists, the IDF operates under a strict moral code, The Spirit of the IDF, which provides: “An IDF soldier will only exercise their power or use their weapon in order to fulfill their mission and only when necessary. They will maintain their humanity during combat and routine times. The soldier will not use their weapon or power to harm uninvolved civilians and prisoners and will do everything in their power to prevent harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.”  The media, and the governments of certain countries as well as the United Nations, should commit to distinguishing between tragic mistakes – which inevitably are made by even the most moral and cautious armies in the world – and the deliberate war crimes carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists.