\n<\/p>\n
More than 30,000 have already died in Gaza, but little has changed in six months of war. Hamas is still holding its hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu<\/strong>\u2019s siege forges on, with Palestinian civilians bearing the brunt of it. And President Joe Biden<\/strong>, for all his public frustrations with the Israeli government\u2019s bombardment, has continued to supply the country with the weapons it has used to carry the war out. But even amid such relentless suffering and carnage, the killing of seven aid workers in an Israeli Defense Force attack Monday still managed to shake the international conscience. \u201cThis is unforgivable,\u201d Erin Gore<\/strong>, CEO of the World Central Kitchen nonprofit, said in a statement<\/a>, confirming the deaths of seven of its workers.<\/p>\n Netanyahu, who has rebuffed international scrutiny of his war effort, expressed \u201cregret\u201d for the incident and said it would be investigated\u2014but also seemed to excuse what he called an \u201cunintentional\u201d killing. \u201cIt happens during war,\u201d the prime minister said<\/a>. Yet, the attack was a damning indictment of the way Netanyahu has executed this war, and ramped up calls for an end to the violence. \u201cIsrael is better than the way this war is being waged,\u201d chef Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s<\/strong>, founder of the humanitarian organization, wrote in a powerful New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/a> Wednesday. \u201cThe Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.\u201d<\/p>\n Such calls aren\u2019t new, of course. But Andr\u00e9s, the celebrated restaurateur and humanitarian, is particularly influential\u2014including within the Biden administration, which quickly sided with WCK and condemned Israel\u2019s attack Tuesday. \u201cThis is not a stand-alone incident,\u201d Biden said in a statement<\/a>, describing himself as \u201coutraged and heartbroken\u201d by the deaths. \u201cThis conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIncidents like yesterday\u2019s simply should not happen,\u201d he added, saying that Israel has \u201cnot done enough to protect civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n The attack<\/a>\u2014which included three strikes on a marked aid convoy traveling in a \u201cdeconflicted zone\u201d\u2014reveals \u201cIsraeli carelessness toward Gaza civilians and international humanitarians alike,\u201d as a Biden administration official told<\/a> Politico, and should be a long-overdue turning point in the conflict. \u201cThis can only be understood as a decision that was equal parts devastating and pointless,\u201d the board of Haaretz<\/em>, one of Israel\u2019s most widely-read newspapers, wrote in a fiery editorial<\/a>. \u201cThe number of dead and wounded in Gaza, along with the hunger and vast destruction and now Monday night\u2019s incident should tell us that the time has come to end the war.\u201d<\/p>\n But Netanyahu has thus far resisted any efforts to get him to change course, and Biden has not applied the level of pressure necessary to get him to do so, despite the growing outcry at home that threatens to upend his reelection bid. (Voters in the key swing state of Wisconsin were the latest to express their disapproval with Biden\u2019s Israel policy, with nearly ten percent of Democrats<\/a> who turned out there Tuesday voting \u201cuninstructed\u201d in protest\u2014enough, potentially, to cost him the state in November.) Indeed, even as the president condemned the WCK \u201ctragedy\u201d and more freely criticizes Netanyahu, his administration has continued to push Congress to authorize the sale of $18 billion in fighter jets to Israel\u2014which would be, as the Times<\/em> noted<\/a> Tuesday, one of the largest arms sales to the country in recent years.<\/p>\n That kind of behind-the-scenes dealing would seem to undermine the public admonishments he and his administration have made about Netanyahu\u2019s offensive, as well as his calls for a humanitarian ceasefire he said last month would \u201cease the intolerable humanitarian crisis, and build toward something more enduring.\u201d \u201cNo more innocent lives lost,\u201d Andr\u00e9s said<\/a> after the attack Monday. \u201cPeace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n