The nightmare unleashed on Gaza by the IDF’s (Israeli Defence Force) war with Hamas has seen over 45,000 people killed and turned the enclave into the single deadliest place on earth to be a child.
But among the rubble of the 34 hospitals, 450 schools and 240,000 houses destroyed by bombs and bulldozers, there are heroes. Medics perform lifesaving surgery in terrible conditions, teachers lead classes in refugee camps while volunteers cook and distribute basic food to a population threatened with famine.
These people are non-combatants. Armed with nothing more than stethoscopes, chalk and ladles, they are supposedly protected from attack by the Geneva Convention, but they are attacked just the same.
Humanitarian workers as targets
In its war with what the Israeli defence minister called the human animals of Gaza, when even the president regurgitates the decades old right wing trope that there are no innocent civilians in Palestine, there is a growing belief that the IDF takes that to mean everyone living there is a legitimate target.
Since 7 October 2023, at least 333 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza as well as over a thousand doctors, nurses and medical staff. Many others have been arrested or have simply disappeared. Never before have so many aid workers been killed in a single crisis. The dead include experts working for agencies such as Oxfam, The Red Crescent and Médicins Sans Frontières. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has seen one out of every 50 of its employees killed – the highest death toll in UN history.
Chef Mahmoud and the Gaza soup kitchen
One of the heroes of this crisis was Mahmoud Almadhoun, known as Chef Mahmoud. When the region’s most powerful army began dismantling his homeland, he didn’t take up arms, he picked up a ladle, but that decision still cost him his life.
In February 2024 aid organisations were forced to suspend operations meaning no aid could reach Northern Gaza. In response, Mahmoud and some friends started a soup kitchen in the City of Bait Lahia. With just four large pots, some firewood and essential ingredients, they prepared hot meals for their neighbours. On the first day they fed 120 families.
Since then, the Gaza Soup Kitchen’s capacity has expanded to provide meals for up to 3000 people a day and despite having to repeatedly relocate and the daily challenge of securing ingredients, it now operates from a network of venues across the enclave. They have even helped to organise makeshift schools and medical facilities.
However, they now have todo all this without their founder. On 30 November 2024 Chef Mahmoud left his shelter to go to Kamal Adwan Hospital where he had been helping to feed patients and staff. He got no further than 30 yards before an Israeli drone attacked and killed him. No one else was injured in the incident.
The Gaza Soup Kitchen believes this was a targeted assassination. Chef Mahmoud’s brother, Hani Almadhoun is the senior director of philanthropy for UNRWA and has led the fundraising effort for the kitchen. He is in no doubt about the motive: “My brother slowed down the ethnic cleansing of North Gaza, that’s why he was taken out.”
Starvation and ethnic cleansing
The IDF have always denied that they target humanitarian workers.
Way back in April 2024,when seven of its staff were killed in what the World Central Kitchen called the deliberate targeting of aid workers, a government spokesperson stated there was “No way in the world that Israel would target people that come to give aid.” Benjamin Netanyahu talked of regrettable mistakes, insisting “we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again”.
But the ‘mistakes’ keep happening, even in designated humanitarian zones, and with such regularity that more and more organisations are concluding that they are in fact deliberate acts which constitute war crimes. Many echo UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini’s demand that impunity for “the systematic disregard for the protection of humanitarian workers, premises and operations … cannot become the new norm”.
But, why would Israel’s leaders authorise these attacks and risk the International Court of Justice issuing more arrest warrants against them?
Increasing numbers of groups with expertise in the field, such as Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, believe the IDF are using starvation as a weapon of war. Médicins Sans Frontières says there are undeniable signs that Israelis engaged in a campaign of “mass killings and ethnic cleansing”.
Aid groups under attack
Now, if the army is attempting to drive a population out through terror or famine then anyone trying to mitigate that fear or alleviate that hunger is as much their enemy as any terrorist. In these circumstances medics, ambulance drivers, and even chefs, are called legitimate targets.
There are other indications that humanitarian organisations are in the crosshairs. The Israeli parliament has banned the largest established agency from operating in the occupied territories and recently it’s been revealed that over a year ago the IDF’s rules of engagement were altered to allow attacks with a higher risk of civilian casualties.
Even when aid groups have provided their exact location to the IDF, a convention long used in conflicts to ensure their protection, they have still come under attack. Human Rights Watch questions the suggestion that such incidents are errors. Indeed, the manufacturers of drones used in many such attacks, including the one that killed Chef Mahmoud, boast that their pinpoint accuracy allows the military to have the highest confidence that they have correctly targeted their intended victims.
Doctors as targets
As well as aid workers, scores of medics have been arrested by the Israeli authorities, in direct contravention of international law. Doctors like Hussam Abu Safia, an expert in paediatrics and neonatology at the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital who refused orders to abandon his patients even after his son was killed and he was injured in an Israeli raid. On 27 December, together with dozens of other staff, he was taken to an undisclosed detention centre to be interrogated about what the IDF called his “terrorist activities”.
On the same weekend that Chef Mahmoud died, Doctor Ahmad Ziad Al-Kahlout, the director of intensive care at the hospital he volunteered at, was also killed by a drone strike.
The few remaining operational ambulances in Gaza continue to come under attack and as winter continues, there are children freezing to death in refugee camps which Israel claims are legitimate targets for bombing raids.
Chef Mahmoud liked to finish his messages to family, friends and supporters with the Arabic word ‘Mostamreen’ (مستمرين), meaning ’we will continue’. And such is proving to be the case as among the heroes who have picked up ladles to help keep the Gaza Soup Kitchen going are Omar and Fatema, his eldest son and daughter.
All the aid organisations mentioned above have fundraising sites. You can find the Gaza Soup Kitchen’s Go Fund Me page here or donate directly via their website at gazasoupkitchen.com.
