Israel reportedly targeted and killed several local policemen who were securing aid deliveries in two separate attacks, along with some of their family members and unrelated bystander. And on the next day, the Israeli military killed 12 people, among them officials representing tribal committees, who were coordinating aid distribution efforts.

Two days later, Israel’s favored aid provider, World Central Kitchen, fell victim to the same policy: over the course of several minutes an IDF drone pursued a 7-member WCK team driving along a designated route, and, in three different airstrikes several kilometers apart, targeted and killed every single one of them.

The right wing Makor Rishon newspaper concluded, on the basis of conversations with drone operators involved in the assassination of the aid workers, that Mendel was only implementing the official policy jointly set by Blinken and the Israeli cabinet back in October: “The mission order made it clear that the IDF is instructed to thwart an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take over the aid trucks that entered Gaza. The IDF received this instruction from the Security Cabinet at the beginning of the war, sometime around October 18, 2023, following heavy pressure from the United States.”

Follow-ups by U.S. press in the next few months revealed the State Department was happy to have the investigation conducted by the president and CEO of one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers. The ultimate culprit for the killings—the policy that Blinken had brokered—was not amended