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Israel Killed Gaza Aid Worker Who Participated in Oct. 7 Massacre; Media Framed It as Cruel Murder
Aerial view shows a World Central Kitchen (WCK) barge loaded with food arriving off Gaza, in this handout image released March 15, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The IDF announced on Saturday that it had conducted a targeted strike on a vehicle inside Gaza, eliminating Hazmi Kadih (also known as Ahed Azmi Qudeih), a Palestinian who infiltrated Kibbutz Nir Oz and took part in the October 7 terror attacks last year.
Kadih also happens to have been an employee of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid agency.
True to form, WCK joined the bloated, overfunded ecosystem of Palestinian-focused aid organizations professing ignorance about their staff’s double lives, instead issuing a statement expressing that it was “heartbroken” over the incident and claiming to have “no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7th Hamas attack.”
This response is particularly rich coming from an organization that, earlier this year, demanded an “independent inquiry” into the IDF’s actions after several WCK workers were killed in an Israeli strike in April.
Back then, WCK declared that the IDF could not “credibly” investigate itself and insisted that “systemic change” was necessary to prevent “more military failures, more apologies, and more grieving families.”
Perhaps WCK will now call for an independent inquiry into how someone who took part in the mass murder of innocent civilians –and made his support for it crystal clear on social media — managed to infiltrate its ranks.
Or will this damning revelation be quietly brushed aside, as accountability rarely seems to flow in the other direction?
I found the Facebook account of Ahed Azmi Qadi, the @WCKitchen employee who was also a terrorist who participated in the October 7th massacre.
Let’s see what he’s posted
https://t.co/yuMVW8auLB pic.twitter.com/32XDgGIT5y
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) November 30, 2024
We somehow suspect it will be the latter, and it wouldn’t be all that surprising, given that the media are already laying the groundwork to help WCK weather this scandal unscathed.
Let’s examine the headlines reporting the IDF’s strike on the terrorist-linked vehicle.
Nearly every mainstream news outlet — including BBC, NPR, AFP, Reuters, and Sky News — framed the incident as Israel simply “killing aid workers,” while emphasizing that WCK has now suspended its Gaza operations as a result of the strike.
This narrative seems carefully constructed to villainize Israel, and deflect scrutiny from WCK’s hiring practices — or the uncomfortable evidence that one of its employees was involved in a massacre of innocent civilians.
To its credit, Sky News at least acknowledged the Hamas connection to the October 7 attacks in its subheading — a minimal nod to the context that others failed to provide.
Below are the headlines from Reuters, the BBC, NPR, and AFP — all of which hid the truth:
Reuters
BBC
NPR
AFP
In contrast, a handful of outlets, including The New York Times, ABC News, POLITICO, The Los Angeles Times, and, surprisingly, The Guardian, deserve commendation for including the IDF’s statement that Hazmi Kadih was a terrorist.
Their reporting proves that it is possible to fit critical facts into a headline, but that in some cases the media chooses not to.
The Guardian
POLITICO
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
As we’ve seen time and again, there’s a troubling “dualism” within these organizations operating in Gaza. Publicly, they speak in the language of compassion and neutrality. Behind the scenes, however, they are too often staffed with antisemites, terror sympathizers, or the dangerously naive.
This latest revelation about WCK employing a terrorist isn’t an outlier — it’s yet another glaring example of the systemic issues plaguing the overfunded and under-scrutinized aid sector in Gaza.
Back in April, when Israel swiftly acknowledged, apologized for, investigated, and even dismissed senior officers involved in a tragic drone strike that killed WCK aid workers, the media wasted no time branding Israel as guilty of everything from “trigger-happy behavior” to “going rogue.”
The incident wasn’t treated as an isolated, tragic mistake — the kind that happens in warfare, as we’ve seen countless times with many of Israel’s closest allies fighting in the Middle East, including the United States.
And yet, whenever an aid worker in Gaza is unmasked as a Hamas terrorist, the media fall conspicuously silent. If the connection to terrorism is acknowledged at all, it’s presented as a one-off anomaly rather than evidence of a systemic “terror problem” within these organizations. The same scrutiny and outrage never seem to apply.
It’s the double standard we’ve come to expect but must not accept. How many more so-called “humanitarian workers” must be exposed as murderous terrorists before the media acknowledge that not every aid group is beyond reproach? This pattern of silence and selective outrage cannot continue. It’s time for the media to hold these organizations accountable — or at least admit they have no interest in doing so.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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