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The whole western world is outraged after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity: three of them British, one Palestinian and single citizens of Australia, Poland, USA and Canada (one victim held a dual American and Canadian citizenship). IDF attacked a convoy of three vehicles spaced 1.6 km and 800 m apart (or 1 mile and 0.5 mile apart). The attack consisted of three methodical missile strikes aimed at each vehicle and took a couple of minutes. This in conjunction with the fact that the convoy was previously announced to IDF leaves little space for a mistake.
More then 600 senior jurists from UK conducted a letter in which they accuse Israel of war crimes and call for a ban on sale of weapon systems to Israel. Prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese 'expressed outrage over the death of an Australian aid worker'. Yacov Livne, Israeli ambassador to Poland rubbed the Polish public opinion very wrong way when he refused to apologize for the death of a Polish citizen and accused some Polish politicians of antisemitism. Some demand an expulsion of the ambassador, which is unlikely to happen. After the incident Joe Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu to significantly shift his code of conduct towards civilians in Gaza under the threat of reducing support.
The chief of staff of IDF, Herzi Halevi released a recorded message, saying that the strike "was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers", adding the IDF was "sorry for the unintentional harm". Netanyahu called the event 'tragic' and assured that "he will do everything to prevent this from happening again".
Since the 7th October about 200 aid workers and 100 journalists were killed in Gaza, more than in the rest of the world combined in this time frame, which rises a justified question about the intentions of IDF towards civilians. I'm very interested how is Israel going to act in the face of its crumbling global credibility and its loss of trust among allies, especially when younger, less favorable towards Israel demographics gradually gain political prominence.
Netanyahu said that these deaths were unfortunate, but 'this happens in wartime'. If that's the case, a loss of international support through sloppy rules of engagement is also 'just something that happens in wartime', so Israel needs to wear it.
There are allegedly rumours that there was a terrorist suspect the IDF thought had entered the convoy at the WCK warehouse, but actually stayed behind. That was allegedly enough to trigger the order from someone. (Some discussion on /r/credibledefence)
Edit: 2 Officers fired for the stuff up
It wouldn't probably be very controversial if I say that this explanation of killing seven civilian aid workers is just ridiculous. Even if the convoy actually somehow transported one terrorist, does it justify the death of seven innocent people? And we know that there was no terrorist, so it looks to me more like a damage control on the Israeli side, attempts to water down the responsibility. But maybe it was the trigger and I'm overly cynical.
In the end, as @BahRamYou wrote, probably little will change, since western politicians see supporting Israel as the least bad option, so they have to express their anger in front of public opinion, but it won't influence their long-term attitude.
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