Celebrity chef Jose Andres’s disdain for red tape was one of the reasons his food charity coordinated humanitarian work in Gaza when seven of its staff were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed when their convoy was attacked shortly after overseeing the unloading of 100 tons of food shipped by sea to Gaza.
WCK began working with Spanish charity Open Arms last month to deliver food aid to hungry people in northern Gaza via Cyprus’ maritime corridor.
Previously, Israel refused to allow the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to deliver food to northern Gaza on the grounds that some of its staff were involved in an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7.
Oscar Campos, director of Open Arms, told Reuters in an interview that the sea route between Cyprus and Gaza has been open since December 20 but no organization has used it.
He said they built a makeshift dock out of the debris and unloaded aid just meters from the bombing site, with Israel warning it could not guarantee their safety.
Andres, a Hispanic American, said on the social media platform
He said on March 26 that there were 67 WCK kitchens operating in Gaza, providing food to 350,000 people every day. Operations have now been suspended following an Israeli airstrike on a WCK convoy.
Early in the conflict, WCK worked with Israeli restaurants and hospitals to feed people displaced or injured by the October 7 Hamas attack, then in February switched to helping airdrop aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Andres said Tuesday he was heartbroken and saddened by the families and friends of the seven WCK workers killed in Israeli air strikes. They include citizens of Australia, the United Kingdom and Poland as well as Palestinians and dual citizens of the United States and Canada.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Andrees on the phone to express his condolences. Biden also told Andres he would make it clear to Israel that aid workers must be protected, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news conference.
“Adaptability”
Founded by Andres in 2010 after he traveled to Haiti to help in the earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, WCK has quickly become one of the leading providers of emergency assistance at the sites of natural disasters or human conflicts.
The NGO describes itself as “first on the frontline” with an “entrepreneurial and adaptive” approach that “would rather facilitate people than seek permission or follow a system that lacks urgency and flexibility and Bureaucracy”.
“While others are assessing the situation, we are already feeding, in the process we understand what is happening, not the other way around,” Andrés told Vanity Fair Spanish in a recent interview.
The charity said it entered Ukraine five days after Russia invaded the country in February 2022 and opened restaurants in five cities.
Born in 1969 in a coal-mining town in the Asturias region of northern Spain, Andres served as an apprentice at Ferran Adria’s experimental El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona and then He moved to the United States in 1991, where he opened the snack restaurant Jaleo.
His company, ThinkFoodGroup, now has more than 20 restaurants, including a two-Michelin-star restaurant.
He has developed relationships with some of the most powerful people in the United States, accepting a $100 million donation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021 and building a relationship with former President Barack Obama A harmonious relationship.
Following the National Humanities Medal in 2015, the Obama administration awarded him the Outstanding Americans’ Choice Award in 2014, which is given to naturalized U.S. citizens who have achieved extraordinary achievements.
His relationship with Obama’s White House successor, Donald Trump, has been less cordial.
The Spanish canceled plans to open a restaurant at Trump’s Washington hotel after the then-presidential candidate made comments about Mexicans, calling them “rapists” and “murderers.” Trump sued Andres for breach of contract, and the two settled in 2017.
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