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YIVO digitizes writer Chaim Grade’s archive, a Yiddish treasure with a soap opera backstory
(JTA) — Years ago, when I worked at the Forward, I had a cameo in a real-life Yiddish drama.
A cub reporter named Max Gross sat just outside my office, where he answered the phones. A frequent caller was Inna Grade, the widow of the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and a fierce guardian of his literary legacy. Mrs. Grade would badger poor Max in dozens of phone calls, especially when a Forward story referred kindly to the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Grade’s widow described Singer as a “blasphemous buffoon” whose fame and reputation, she was convinced, came at the expense of her husband’s.
As Max explains in his 2008 memoir, “From Schlub to Stud,” Mrs. Grade “became a bit of a joke around the paper.” And yet in Yiddish literary circles, her protectiveness of one of the 20th century’s most important Yiddish writers was serious business: Because Inna Grade kept such a tight hold on her late husband’s papers — Chaim Grade (pronounced “Grah-deh”) died in 1982 — a generation of scholars was thwarted in taking his true measure.
Inna Grade died in 2010, leaving no signed will or survivors, and the contents of her cluttered Bronx apartment became the property of the borough’s public administrator. In 2013, Chaim Grade’s personal papers, 20,000-volume library, literary manuscripts and publication rights were awarded to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the National Library of Israel. They are now stored in YIVO headquarters on Manhattan’s W. 16th Street.
This week YIVO and the NLI will announce the completion of the digitization of “The Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade,” making the entire archive publicly accessible online. When the folks at YIVO invited me to come and look at the Grade collection, I knew I had to invite Max, not just because of his connection to Inna Grade but because he has become a critically acclaimed novelist in his own right: His 2020 novel “The Lost Shtetl,” which imagines a Jewish village in Poland that has somehow escaped the Holocaust, is in many ways an homage to the Yiddish literary tradition.
We met on Thursday with the YIVO staff, who were tickled by the T-shirt Max was wearing, which had a picture of Chaim Grade and the phrase “Grade is my homeboy.” (Max said his wife bought it for him, although neither could imagine the market for such a shirt.)
Stefanie Halpern, director of the YIVO archives, and novelist Max Gross discuss a thick file containing news clippings relating to the late Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade at YIVO’s Manhattan offices, Feb. 2, 2023. (New York Jewish Week)
The Grade papers — manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, lectures, speeches, essays — are stored in folders in gray boxes, whose neatness belies the years of effort that went into putting them in order. Jonathan Brent, executive director and CEO of YIVO, described for us the Grades’ apartment, which he visited shortly after Inna’s death.
“It was like a combination of my grandmother’s apartment and a writer’s home,” he said. “Everything was books, books to the ceiling. You open a drawer in the kitchen where you think there’ll be knives and forks, there are books, there are manuscripts. You open the cabinet in the bathroom, there are more manuscripts and books and books…. But the thing I remember most is that at the top of a shelf there was that much dust.” He held his fingers about two inches apart.
Inna Grade was Chaim Grade’s second wife. The writer was born in Vilna (now in Lithuania) in 1910. He was able to flee east during the Nazi occupation, leaving behind his mother and his first wife under the assumption that the Germans would only target adult men. It was a tragic miscalculation, and their deaths would haunt Grade the rest of his life. Inna Hecker was born in Ukraine in 1925, and met Grade in Moscow during the war. Married in 1945, they immigrated to the United States in 1948.
Chaim Grade had already established a reputation as a poet, playwright and prose stylist before the war; English translations of his novels “The Agunah” and “The Yeshiva” and serial publication of his novels in the Yiddish press brought him recognition in America for what the Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse calls a “Dostoyevskian talent to animate in fiction the destroyed Talmudic civilization of Europe.” Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber, in a YIVO release, says that Grade was possessed “by the spirit of the yeshiva world he’d left behind; then possessed by the spirits and memories of those who’d been murdered by the Nazis.”
Stefanie Halpern, director of the YIVO archives, showed us the physical evidence of that possession: Grade’s notebooks, in which he wrote down ideas and inspiration in a careful Yiddish script; manuscripts for at least two unpublished dramatic works, “The Dead Can’t Rise Up” and “Hurban” (“Sacrifice”); a photograph of Grade standing amidst the ruins of Vilna during his only visit after the war; pictures of the Bronx apartment taken when the couple was still alive, book-filled but still tidy.
Halpern also showed us the Yiddish typewriter recovered from the apartment, with what is believed to be the last page he worked on still rolled in its platen.
Chaim Grade’s typewriter, preserved in the condition it was found when the Yiddish author died in 1982, contains what are apparently the last lines he ever wrote. (New York Jewish Week)
The archivists are also careful to give Inna her due. After arriving in America she studied literature and received a master’s degree from Columbia, and often translated her husband’s work. Thanks to her, hundreds of clippings of Grade’s work and articles about him have survived.
Her correspondence reflects the lengths she went to protect her husband’s legacy during and after his lifetime, including a bizarre and lengthy letter to the Vatican complaining about Singer. “She was a brilliant and creative person, devoted in a way only a widow can be,” said Brent. “And perhaps devoted to a maddening extent.”
If all that sounds like the stuff of Jewish fiction, it is: In 1969, Cynthia Ozick wrote a novella called “Envy; or, Yiddish in America,” about Yiddish writers very much like Grade consumed with envy for a writer very much like Singer. “They hated him for the amazing thing that had happened to him — his fame — but this they never referred to,” wrote Ozick. “Instead they discussed his style: his Yiddish was impure, his sentences lacked grace and sweep, his paragraph transitions were amateur, vile.”
Halpern showed us a mailgram from Inna to the Forward that makes it clear that she and her husband read and hated the story. In it she describes Ozick as “no less grotesque than evil.”
For all of the gothic Yiddish aspects of its retrieval, “this is probably the single most important literary acquisition in YIVO’s postwar history,” Brent said of the archive. He described publishing projects already underway with Schocken Books and other publishers that will draw on the material.
Max and I discussed what it felt like to see what had become “a bit of a joke” around the Forward office placed at the center of an epic exercise in literary preservation. Max was struck by the way Inna’s personality came through in the papers. “This was her,” he said. “Her obsession, her struggle, all these things. It was definitely remarkable to see that.”
I recalled overhearing his conversations with Inna, and how her behavior could seem funny and exasperating, but also admirable and more than a little sad — in that her devotion to her husband’s reputation may also have prevented scholars from doing the work that would have made him better known.
“Exactly, but that’s one of the reasons why you get into Yiddish literature, because all of these things are true at the same time,” said Max. “Those kinds of scores, rivalries, feuds within Yiddish literature is what is so great about it. It is great to see that somebody really cared and that literature was taken so seriously. And the pettiness was something you couldn’t quite divest from the rest of it.”
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In praise of difficult languages
די גאַנצע וועלט מיינט, אַז לערנען זיך ענגליש איז גרינג ווײַל ענגליש האָט אַזוי ווינציק סופֿיקסן: כּמעט אַלע סובסטאַנטיוון פֿורעמען דעם פּלוראַל אויף -s; ווערבאַלע קאָניוגאַציעס זענען זייער פּשוט; נישטאָ קיין גראַמאַטישער מין, בשעת פֿראַנצייזיש און שפּאַניש האָבן צו צוויי גראַמאַטישע מינים און רײַכע ווערבאַלע קאָניוגאַציעס.
וואָס שייך דײַטשיש און ייִדיש האָבן זיי אַלץ וואָס פֿראַנצייזיש און שפּאַניש, ווי אויך דרײַ גראַמאַטישע מינים, דרײַ אָדער פֿיר בייגפֿאַלן און כּלערליי פֿלעקסיעס (סופֿיקסן וואָס בײַטן דעם גראַמאַטישן טײַטש פֿון אַ זאַץ; grammatical inflections בלע״ז). וועגן לאַטײַן און די סלאַווישע לשונות שמועסט מען נישט: אַלץ וואָס אין דײַטשיש און ייִדיש, אָבער אויך פֿינעף, זעקס אָדער גאָר זיבן בייגפֿאַלן.
איז דאָך קלאָר ווי דער טאָג, אַז ענגליש איז דאָס גרינגסטע. וואָס דאַרפֿט איר מער? בער באָראָכאָוו, דער ייִדישער פֿילאָלאָג און טעאָרעטיקער פֿון דער ציוניסטישער אֵרבעטער־באַוועגונג (1881־1917), האָט נאָך געשריבן אין שמואל ניגערס „פּנקס“ (1913), אַז צוליב דעם וואָס די ענגלישע גראַמאַטיק איז אַזוי פּשוט איז ענגליש איינע פֿון די פּראָגרעסיווסטע שפּראַכן, און אַז הלוואַי וואָלט מאַמע־לשון געגאַנגען מיטן זעלביקן וועג און פֿאַרלוירן זײַנע איבעריקע סופֿיקסן: „דער געזעץ פֿון אַנאַליטישער שפּראַך־פֿאַראיינפֿאַכונג דריקט זיך בולט אויס סײַ אין די סעמיטישע, סײַ אין די [אינדאָ-אייראָפּעיִשע] פּראָגרעסיווסטע, די פֿאָלקסטימלעכסטע און צום מייסטן אַנאַליטישע שפּראַכן פֿון אונדזער צײַט: נײַ־פּערסיש, ענגליש, פֿראַנצייזיש און — ייִדיש“.
נו, מי לנו גדול כּבאָראָכאָוו, אָבער דאָ בין איך מיט אים מחולק: דאָס האָבן אַ שפּאָרע צאָל פֿלעקסיעס איז דווקא נישט קיין חסרון, נאָר גאָר אַ מעלה. פֿאַר וואָס?
לאָמיר אָנכאַפּן פּויליש. אמת, דער אָנהייבער מוז פֿאַרגעדענקען אָן אַ שיעור פֿאָרמעס: פֿלעקסיע פֿון סובסטאַנטיוון, ווערבן, אַדיעקטיוון, פּראָנאָמען און נאָך און נאָך, ווי אויך די דרײַ גראַמאַטישע מינים. אויף ענגליש, ווידער, דאַרף מען כּמעט גאָרנישט פֿאַרגעדענקען — עטלעכע אומרעגולערע סובסטאַנטיוון און אַ צאָל אומרעגולערע ווערבן. אָבער פֿאַר דער טירחה בײַם לערנען זיך פּויליש קריגט מען אַ „פֿעטן ביסן“; מע קען דאָס פֿאַרגלײַכן מיטן טעאַטער און מיטן קינאָ.
איז אַזוי: אַז איר זעט אַ פּיעסע אָדער קוקט אַ פֿילם דאַרפֿט איר דרינגען פֿון די טווּנגען ווער ס׳איז ווער: ווי די פּאַרשוינען הייסן, ווער ס׳האָט די הויפּטראָלע און ווער די קלענערע ראָלעס. טייל מאָל ווילט זיך זען די פֿאָרשטעלונג אַ צווייט מאָל כּדי בעסער צו פֿאַרשטיין דעם אָנהייב פֿונעם סיפּור־המעשׂה. אַזוי איז אויף ענגליש. כ׳ווייס נישט ווי איר, אָבער נישט איין מאָל מוז איך איבערלייענען אַ קעפּל אין אַ צײַטונג צוויי צי אַפֿילו דרײַ מאָל איידער איך פֿאַרשטיי עס, וואָרן מע דאַרף ערשט דערקענען וואָסער וואָרט ס׳איז אַ סובסטאַנטיוו, וואָסער אַן אַדיעקטיוו, וואָסער אַ ווערב. אויף ענגליש קען דאָך איין וואָרט זײַן אַלע דרײַ געווענדט אינעם קאָנטעקסט, און די מאָרפֿאָלאָגיע, ד״ה די פֿאָרעם פֿונעם וואָרט, העלפֿט גאָר נישט.
אויף פּויליש, ווידער, דאַרפֿט איר גאָרנישט דרינגען. מע דערקענט גלײַך וואָס ס׳איז דער סובסטאַנטיוו, וואָס ס׳איז דער ווערב און וואָס ס׳איז דער אַדיעקטיוו. ס׳איז אַזוי ווי אין טעאַטער אָדער אין קינאָ וואָלטן די אַקטיאָרן געטראָגן אויף זיך שילדן מיט אַלע פּרטים: „איך בין משה גאָלדבערג, דער הויפּטהעלד פֿון דער מעשׂה“, „איך בין דער צווייט וויכטיקסטער“ אד״גל. מע דאַרף אַפֿילו נישט קענען אַלע פֿלעסקיעס — אויב מע קען האַלב איז גענוג צו פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ אָדער אַ צײַטונגקעפּל. מע דאַרף גאָר נישט דרינגען; די גאַנצע אינפֿאָרמאַציע האָט מען אונטער דער האַנט און פֿאַר די אויגן.
ייִדיש האָט, פֿאַרשטייט זיך, נישט אַזוי פֿיל זיך אויסצולערנען ווי פּויליש, אָבער גענוג, אַז דאָס קענען זיי אויסנווייניק איז שווערלעך; אָבער פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ איז ווײַטער גרינגער ווי אויף ענגליש. חוץ דעם איז די בייגעוודיקייט פֿון מאַמע־לשון אַ מעלה. אַ שטייגער: אויף ייִדיש איז דער ווערטער־סדר אַ סך פֿרײַער; ענגליש איז געפּענטעט דערמיט וואָס דער ווערטער־סדר שפּילט אַזאַ גרויסע ראָלע בײַם פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ. דהײַנו, אויף ענגליש מוז דער סוביעקט בדרך־כּלל קומען פֿאַרן ווערב, מע זאָל אים דערקענען, בשעת אויף ייִדיש, וואָס האָט די בייגפֿאַלן נאָמינאַטיוו, דאַטיוו און אַקוזאַטיוו, קען דער סוביעקט קומען אויף פֿאַרשיידענע ערטער, וואָס דאָס קען מען אויסניצן כּדי אונטערצושטרײַכן דאָס חשיבֿות פֿון אַ סובסטאַנטיוו וואָסער ראָלע ער זאָל אינעם קאָנטעקסט נישט שפּילן.
למשל: אויף ענגליש קען מען בלויז זאָגן Everyone knows David, בשעת אויף ייִדיש קען מען זאָגן „אַלע קענען דודן“ אָדער „דודן קענען אַלע,“ וואָס גיט דעם זאַץ אַ ביסל אַן אַנדער קנייטש.
מאַמע־לשון האָט אויך, פּונקט ווי דײַטשיש, די סלאַווישע און צום טייל אויך די ראָמאַנישע לשונות, אַ ברייטן באַניץ פֿונעם דאַטיוו, וווּ אויף ענגליש מוז מען אָנקומען צום נאָמינאַטיוו אָדער אין גאַנצן פּאַראַפֿראַזירן. למשל, דאָרטן וווּ ענגליש האָט אין תּוך אַרײַן בלויז איין מעגלעכן אופֿן דאָס אַרויסברענגען: he is cold, אַקעגן דרײַ מעגלעכקייטן אויף ייִדיש: „אים איז קאַלט“ (ער פֿילט זיך קאַלט), „ער איז קאַלט“ (ער איז טויט), „ער איז אַ קאַלטער“ (ער איז אַ מענטש וואָס ווײַזט נישט אַרויס קיין געפֿילן).
נאָך אַ משל: מאָטל פּייסיעס „מיר איז גוט, איך בין אַ יתום“ — ווי זשע גיט מען דאָס איבער אויף ענגליש אַז מע האָט נישט קיין דאַטיוו? איך האָב געפֿונען I’m lucky to be an orphan — טאַקע נישט קיין שלעכטער עקוויוואַלענט, אָבער ס׳האָט נישט קיין ייִדישן טעם. אַגבֿ, ווען מע באַקלאָגט זיך, אַז ס׳איז אוממעגלעך איבערצוזעצן ייִדיש, גילט דאָס מער פֿאַר ענגליש ווי פֿאַר אַנדערע אייראָפּעיִשע לשונות. אין דעם באַנד „מאַקס ווײַנרײַכן צו זײַן זיבעציקסטן געבוירן־טאָג“ (1964) האָט דער פֿילאָלאָג טעאָדאָר גוטמאַן געדרוקט אַן אַרבעט „שלום־עליכם אין די רויוואַרגשפּראַכן“, וווּ ער פֿאַרגלײכט איבערזעצונגען אויף דײַטש, העברעיִש, אוקראַיִניש, רוסיש און ענגליש פֿון שלום־עליכמס „דאָס טעפּל“. דאָרטן קומט ער צום אויספֿיר, אַז דער איבערזעץ וואָס שפּיגלט צום בעסטן אָפּ דער אָריגינאַל איז דער אוקראַיִנישער. דאָס איז צום טייל ווײַל שלום־עליכם האָט געלעבט און געשאַפֿן אין אוקראַיִנע, אָבער אויך דערפֿאַר וואָס די ענגלישע גראַמאַטיק איז אַזוי אומבייגעוודיק אַקעגן דער ייִדישער, וואָס דאָס שפּיגלט זיך אָפּ צווישן אַנדערן אין דעם, וואָס ענגליש האָט נישט קיין דאַטיוו!
דאָ קען מען אויך צוגעבן אַ משל פֿון פֿראַנצייזיש. דער אויסדריק s’il vous plaît פֿאַרטײַטשט מען אויף ענגליש if you please. נישטאָ קיין ספֿק, אַז 99% ענגליש־רעדערס מיינען, אַז דאָ איז you נאָמינאַטיוו, דער סוביעקט פֿונעם ווערב. דאָס פֿראַנצייזישע, אָבער, איז טײַטש if it pleases you, וווּ you איז דאַטיוו, דער אָביעקט פֿונעם ווערב. אויף ענגליש ווערט עס האַמעטנע; אויף ייִדיש, ווידער גיט מען עס גרינג איבער: אויב ס׳געפֿעלט אײַך.
אַ כּלל, באָראָכאָוו איז גערעכט, אַז די טענדענץ בײַ אַ סך לשונות איז צו פֿאַרלירן סופֿיקסן, אָבער דערפֿון קען מען נישט אויספֿירן, אַז אַזאַ פּראָצעס איז אַלע מאָל אַ ניצלעכער. ווען אים וואָלט געווען באַשערט לענגערע יאָרן וואָלט ער אפֿשר אײַנגעזען, אַז אין לשון קען פּראָגרעסיווקייט אויך זײַן אַ חסרון.
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NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack
(JTA) — New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she felt a “deeply personal” commitment to protect Jews in a speech at Central Synagogue, where she is a member, in the aftermath of an attack during Shabbat services there.
Tisch addressed the Reform synagogue in Midtown Manhattan during its Friday evening prayers a week after a man disrupted the service by shouting obscenities, punched a congregant in the face and spat on and headbutted a Black security guard while calling him a racial slur. Suspect Larry Montes, who was arrested at the scene, has been charged with hate crimes in federal and state court.
Tisch said there were no serious injuries. She called the attack “a message written in violence,” intended to tell “everyone who shares the victim’s identity that they do not belong, that they are vulnerable, and that they should be afraid.”
She also noted that roughly half of confirmed hate crimes in New York City have for years targeted Jews, who make up about 10% of the population.
“As a proud Jew and a lifelong member of this congregation, you have my word that I stand with you in these uncertain and precarious times,” said Tisch, adding that her commitment at Central Synagogue was “deeply personal.”
Tisch spoke after an interfaith group of seven Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders gave remarks about solidarity between their communities.
“Might our presence here be a testament to the ties, the durable ties that bind each of us together,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
“We are here tonight to affirm that you do not walk through this city alone, but you are held in a covenant between our communities,” added Rev. Adriene Thorne of The Riverside Church. “What affects one of us touches all of us.”
Montes told NYPD officers after his arrest that he felt disrespected at the Central Synagogue service and described the incident as “a racial thing” and “all religious motivated,” according to a federal criminal complaint. He also said that he identified as Jewish.
His aunt, Myriam Montes, told The New York Post that he was “mentally traumatized because of his desire to belong to that religion [Judaism].” The New York Times reported that Montes had a history of mental health issues documented by the NYPD.
A Facebook page that appears to belong to Montes is littered with posts about Israel and Judaism. They include an image of a map of Israel with the text, “Keep Israel in your heart,” a video of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi discussing why evangelical Christians support Israel and a video comparing Mayor Zohran Mamdani with Iran’s former supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia jointly condemned Israel for declining to open a criminal probe into the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Deir al-Balah.
The three countries, whose citizens were among the dead, called the decision “shameful,” adding that “the victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability, and we will continue to seek answers on their behalf.”
Poland, who also lost a citizen in the strike, also sharply criticized Israel and summoned its ambassador to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw last week. Australia also summoned Israel’s ambassador.
The seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they had just dropped off food supplies at a warehouse. The army mistook them for Hamas operatives, according to the IDF.
In a statement released last week, the IDF said its prosecutors found that despite serious failures in its assessment that Hamas had seized the aid convoy, commanders’ decisions raised no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.”
The World Central Kitchen (WCK) had hired armed guards and had not coordinated the route with the IDF, leading the army to conclude Hamas had seized the supplies and that its operatives were in the vehicles that left the warehouse, according to the army.
José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded World Central Kitchen, said at the time that the convoy had been targeted “systematically, car by car.”
The WCK denounced the IDF’s decision, writing in a statement last week, “There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
It called for an independent investigation into the strikes on the convoy, “because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct.”
The WCK incident was one of five cases out of Gaza about which the IDF on Wednesday gave an update regarding its investigations, including the death of Hind Rajab, age 5, on January 29, 2024.
She had been traveling in a vehicle in Gaza with six members of the Hamada family, which included her aunt, uncle and five cousins. In its statement Wednesday, the IDF admitted for the first time that it fired at the vehicle, killing five members of the Hamada family. Hind and her 15-year old cousin Layan Hamada initially survived, but were trapped in a combat zone and killed within hours.
The IDF said it is opening an investigation into the events in the hours that followed the initial shooting of the five members of the Hamada family, including Hind’s death.
Hind’s killing resonated globally, galvanizing students 5,700 miles away who seized Hamilton Hall during the Columbia University protests, renaming it “Hind’s Hall” after her.
The film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” built around recordings of her phone calls with the Red Crescent begging for help, was nominated for an Academy Award this year.
The IDF had initially said its forces were not within firing range of the vehicle. The army’s announcement Wednesday was a reversal of that position.
“Troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them,” even though the army had issued a notice to Gaza residents to stay away from the area, the military explained.
“According to the reports published, this vehicle belonged to the Hamada family. As a result of the fire, five of the vehicle’s passengers were killed, and two survived: Hind Rajab and her cousin Layan Hamada,” the IDF stated.
The experience of the two girls caught in an active combat zone was documented by the Red Crescent after Layan called its operators. Once she was killed by gunfire, Hind continued to talk to the dispatchers until she too was killed.
The Israeli army described how it tried to coordinate with the Red Crescent to allow for an ambulance to evacuate the girls.
“Upon the ambulance’s arrival at the scene of the incident, a shell was fired toward it,” resulting in the deaths of the two paramedics travelling in it,” the IDF said. “Several days later, the bodies of the seven members of the Hamada family, including the bodies of Hind and Layan, were recovered from the vehicle. In addition, the bodies of the two paramedics were recovered from the ambulance.”
The statement does not say how Hind and Layan died.
The IDF said it was ordering the investigation because of failures in coordinating the ambulance’s movement, but that it could not release further details while the probe is ongoing.
In a statement to JTA, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it “demands an independent international committee of inquiry into this incident, as well as the protection of medical personnel wherever they may be.” It added, “There is no communication with the Israeli occupation regarding this matter or any other. The Palestinian Red Crescent will cooperate with the investigation once it is international and independent.”
The IDF said last week it was also opening a criminal probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers, including a U.N. employee, in March 2025.
In its statement last week, the IDF on that day said its forces had set an ambush for Hamas vehicles in Tel al-Sultan. “Approximately one hour later, the troops received a report regarding five vehicles moving toward them at high speed,” the military said.
“The vehicles stopped in very close proximity to the troops, and their occupants rapidly disembarked. A decision was then made to open fire toward them. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the troops fired at an additional vehicle that arrived at the scene,” the military explained. Only later, the army said, did its forces understand that they had struck ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. vehicle. The army said that six of the emergency workers were also Hamas members.
The earlier IDF review led to the dismissal of a deputy commander after professional failures were found. At first, the military said that the vehicles approached without their emergency signals activated, an account contradicted by cellphone video recovered from one of the dead paramedics. On Wednesday, the military said that there was reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
The IDF declined to investigate two other incidents involving the deaths of four employees of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, two of whom were killed in the Khan Younis area in February 2024, and another two who were killed in Gaza City in 2023.
In a statement on its website, Doctors Without Borders rebuked the IDF’s decision to close the cases. “This is not justice,” the group said. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself.”
B’Tselem, the left-wing Israeli human rights organization, went further, telling the JTA that Israel’s military law enforcement system, “is not a genuine mechanism for uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, but a whitewashing mechanism designed to create the appearance of an investigation.”
Yair Dvir, the spokesperson, added that such investigations focus on low-ranking soldiers while “the policies, orders, and senior military and political officials behind them remain outside the scope of investigation.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers appeared first on The Forward.
