The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called the World Central Kitchen (WCK) after seeing a gunman mount one of its vehicles and fire into the air on Monday evening, but WCK could not reach its employees, according to a report.
That would suggest that Hamas might have tried to ensure that the IDF misidentified the WCK convoy as terrorists — a tactic consistent with Hamas’s use of civilian deaths to generate global pressure on Israel to stop the war in Gaza.
The Jerusalem Post reported that late Monday evening, before the WCK convoy reached a hangar, an IDF drone unit reported seeing a Hamas gunman climb the lead vehicle and fire into the air — a signal used by Hamas terrorists.
The IDF apparently called off airstrikes on the convoy at that point, and tried calling the aid workers. The Post noted:
As the events developed, the IDF tried to call the aid workers involved in the field and was unable to reach them.
Next, the IDF called the WCK headquarters. The WCK headquarters tried to call its own aid workers in the field, but they did not answer.
When vehicles left the hangar, the IDF drone unit believed that these were not the same vehicles and thought that these were Hamas vehicles or that around four Hamas operatives had joined or taken over the convoy.
The IDF mistook the WCK vehicles for Hamas vehicles because infrared cameras could not see the logo atop the vans.
As Breitbart News reported, the IDF will now require all aid vehicles to use a sticker that can be identified by infrared cameras. It is not clear what would prevent Hamas terrorists from stealing the stickers or using similar ones to hide.
Two Israeli military officials were fired over the attack, largely because the military determined that the strikes on the second two vehicles in the convoy were not as justified as the first. The IDF has apologized profusely for its mistake.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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