Israel says Australia ‘omitted crucial details’ in report on WCK aid worker deaths

Aug. 5 () –

Israel has claimed Australia omitted “crucial details” from its report following an internal investigation which found that the Israeli military had made “serious lapses” and even “failed” to follow its own procedures when carrying out operations such as the one in April that resulted in the deaths of several aid workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK), including an Australian national.

The Australian government’s statement, the Israeli Embassy in Canberra said in a statement posted on its social media profile X, includes “some misrepresentations and omits crucial details,” such as the “degree of cooperation and openness” shown by the Israel Defense Forces, and “with regard to certain aspects of the tragic incident itself.”

The embassy said the government “takes the serious incident with the utmost seriousness” and stressed that “the IDF has taken full responsibility for the serious errors that led to the tragic incident,” recalling that it dismissed two soldiers from their posts and reprimanded three others. It also noted that the army contacted the military prosecutor to give him access to “all requested areas” in order to “help the Australian people understand how this incident occurred and how it has been investigated.”

He added that “following the incident, several measures were taken to further improve coordination between humanitarian aid organizations and the IDF, by modifying and redefining operational orders and procedures to minimize the risk of such errors being repeated.”

Australian authorities have recently said that Israeli forces have been making “mistaken identifications” and “unsound” decisions when carrying out these types of bombings, which are part of their offensive against the Gaza Strip, which has already left almost 39,600 dead since October 7.

WCK workers were in the Gaza Strip on a humanitarian mission, in collaboration with the NGO Open Arms, to establish a maritime humanitarian corridor between Cyprus and Gaza and thus overcome the enormous obstacles imposed by Israel to the delivery of aid by land. The deceased were of British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian and American-Canadian nationality.