‘Biden is p***ed’: Furious Joe, 81, prepares for high-stakes first phone call with Netanyahu after strike killed seven aid workers with critics slamming president for being angry ‘in private’ while sending bombs to Israel
President Joe Biden and the Israeli prime minister will make calls Thursday morning after a drone strike killed seven aid workers in Gaza — including one U.S.-Canadian citizen.
The call is expected to be ‘tense’, officials claim, after Biden called for accountability and swift investigation into the Israeli army’s attack on a route approved for aid delivery.
“Biden has been bullied,” a US official told Axios. ‘The temperature towards Bibi is very high.’
Aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) were delivering food to war-torn Gaza on Monday when their three-car convoy, marked as humanitarian aid for the area, was hit by an Israeli ‘triple tap’ drone strike.
Washington-area celebrity chef José Andrés founded WCK and is a longtime Biden supporter. The president spoke with Andrés this week after the strike.
President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak Thursday morning in the first call since an IDF strike killed seven humanitarian workers in Gaza
An Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attack on a three-vehicle convoy of aid workers on Monday resulted in seven deaths and sparked international outrage over Israel’s waging war with Hamas terrorists in Gaza
Israel apologized for what it called “a serious mistake” and said it was investigating the incident – assuring it had not “intentionally” attacked aid workers.
International outrage followed the death of the aid workers, including Biden.
Biden will speak with Netanyahu on Thursday for the first time since the strike, as tensions are high.
“I think you could sense the frustration in that statement yesterday,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday in reference to Biden’s statement in which the president claimed Israel has not done enough to protect civilians and protect aid workers caught in the crosshairs of war. in Gaza.
The conflict erupted on October 7 when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and killed the largest number of Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. Israel launched a barrage of retaliatory attacks on Gaza, where Hamas is the de facto government.
Pro-Palestinian groups and activists have since expressed outrage, protesting the Biden administration’s support for US ally Israel and calling for a ceasefire. Supporters of Israel argue that demands for a ceasefire are tantamount to saying that Israel has no right to defend itself against terrorists who want to exterminate the Jewish people.
Biden is among the world leaders who want accountability for the deaths.
“I am outraged and deeply saddened by the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers, including one American, in Gaza yesterday,” Biden wrote in a strongly worded statement on the incident. “They provided food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy.”
Palestinians inspect a vehicle with the World Central Kitchen logo that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip
Biden called for an investigation and accountability after Israeli drone strike killed dual US-Canadian citizen, 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger (right) and six others
People carry the body of one of the foreign workers from World Central Kitchen killed in the airstrike as the bodies are transported to their families outside Gaza
The president added: “Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be done quickly, it must be accountable and its findings must be made public.
The White House declined to say Wednesday whether Israel would face any consequences as a result of the anger over the strike against World Central Kitchen workers.
Andrés, the group’s founder, said in an interview that the IDF targeted aid workers “systematically, car by car.”
He claimed that the Israeli Defense Forces knew the movements of its aid workers prior to their ill-fated trip to Gaza and that the deaths were not a situation where “they dropped the bomb in the wrong place.”
“This was a distance of 1.5 to 1.8 kilometers, with a very clear humanitarian convoy with signs at the top, in the roof, a very colorful logo that we are obviously very proud of,” he said. ‘It is ‘very clear who we are and what we do.’
“Even if we were not in coordination with the (IDF), no democratic country and no army can target civilians and humanitarians,” he told Reuters after writing an op-ed declaring that “food is not a weapon of war .’
Jacob Flickinger, 33, a dual citizen of America and Canada, was killed in the strike. He was a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who served in Afghanistan.
Flickinger’s father wrote in a Facebook post paying tribute to his son: ‘My son, Jacob, was killed on Monday while delivering food aid to starving families in Gaza. He died doing what he loved and serving others through his work at World Central Kitchen.”
A GoFundMe was set up to help Flickinger’s partner Sandy, with whom he shared a one-year-old son, pay for any flights and funeral expenses, and to take some of the burden off since Flickinger was the sole earner .
Washington, DC celebrity chef José Andrés (pictured) founded World Central Kitchen and is a longtime supporter of Biden – the two spoke this week after the strike
A Palestinian boy plays in front of the closed headquarters of the World Central Kitchen, two days after a convoy of aid workers was hit by an Israeli attack in Gaza
Also among those killed in the attack were three veterans of the British Armed Forces who served as security for the relief mission: John Chapman, 57, James (Jim) Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47.
Other aid workers killed in the strike included 25-year-old Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha; Australian Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, 43; Damian Soból, a 35-year-old from Poland.
At least 196 aid workers, including 175 members of the UN staff, have been killed in Gaza, according to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the strike “unconscionable” but “an inevitable consequence of the way the war is being waged.”