The mother of the Quebecer killed by an airstrike on aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday rejects Israel’s explanation for what happened that day.
But Sylvie Labrecque, her voice choked with exhaustion and grief, remains hopeful that the death of her son, Jacob Flickinger, and six of his colleagues will bring positive change for all humanitarian workers and for the population of the Gaza Strip. .
“I feel calm in the sense that I feel like a lot of people honor Jacob in different ways,” she said in an interview. So I hope that there will be a positive impact in terms of the possibility of avoiding some of these deaths. »
His son Jacob Flickinger, a 33-year-old former soldier, was one of seven employees of the non-governmental organization (NGO) World Central Kitchen who died on 1er April when their convoy was hit by a series of drone strikes, after delivering 100 tonnes of food to a warehouse in Deir el-Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip.
While a member of the Royal 22e Quebec Regiment, Mr. Flickinger was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. Retired from the Canadian army in 2019, he joined the NGO “World Central Kitchen” last fall to recover from a syndrome of post-traumatic stress. He had been in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of March.
He and his partner, Sandy Leclerc, lived in Costa Rica with their son, now 18 months old.
In addition to the Quebecer, the Israeli strike killed the Australian Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, 43, the Pole Damian Sobol, 35, the Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 25, as well as the British John Chapman, 57, James Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47.
The deaths of these aid workers sparked outrage around the world — and even Israel’s most ardent ally, the United States, issued a harsh rebuke and warning.
President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call Thursday that continued U.S. support for Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas in the Gaza Strip depends on concrete steps to protect the humanitarian workers and to open more access routes for humanitarian aid.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office said Friday morning that his Security Cabinet had approved a series of “immediate measures” to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, including the reopening of a key crossing that had been destroyed during the Hamas attack on October 7.
An internal investigation
Israel also released the findings of an investigation led by a retired Israeli general, who blamed the airstrike on a procedural violation and an error of observation on the ground.
The military spokesperson said that under the Israeli army’s rules of engagement, officers must have more than one reason to identify a person as a target before they can hit them.
But the investigation determined that a colonel authorized the series of deadly drone strikes based on a major’s observation — from grainy footage from a camera mounted on a drone — that someone one in the convoy was armed. That observation turned out to be false, military officials said.
The army said the colonel and major were fired, while three other officers were reprimanded, the most senior of whom was the head of the Southern Command.
The results of his investigation have been forwarded to the army attorney general, who will decide whether the officers or anyone else involved in the deaths of the aid workers should be further punished or even prosecuted.
“It’s a tragedy,” army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters. “This is a serious event for which we are responsible and it should not have happened — and we will make sure it does not happen again.” »
Sylvie Labrecque maintains that this explanation rings false. “They deny it was their fault,” she said. “People can decide what to think, but to me it’s bullshit. Of course, it was absolutely planned in such a way that that’s what they wanted to do: they wanted to eliminate these workers, these humanitarians, [puisqu’ils] simply do not want to feed the refugees. They want them to die, you know. »
Aid workers were using an Israeli military-approved route to transfer food from a makeshift pier, built by World Central Kitchen, on the coast of the Gaza Strip to a warehouse in Deir el-Balah, a town located between Rafah and Gaza.
In mid-March, the NGO’s efforts to build the pier, using rubble from bombed buildings, allowed it to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip by sea for the first time in over two decades.
In a statement on Friday, World Central Kitchen stressed that the Israeli report clearly indicates that the army (IDF) “deployed lethal force without regard to its own protocols, chain of command and rules of engagement”.
“The IDF acknowledged that our teams followed all appropriate communications procedures. The IDF’s own video shows no reason to fire on our personnel convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat. »
The NGO is calling for an independent commission to investigate this tragedy. “World Central Kitchen” suspended its activities in the Gaza Strip on Monday.