(NewsNation) — More than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing severe food shortages from the Israel-Hamas war, and Chef José Andrés is hoping to help fill the need.
Andres recently traveled to Gaza along with his nonprofit organization, World Central Kitchen, to provide food and support and distribute aid to displaced Palestinians.
“World Central Kitchen has been working in Gaza from the very early moments of this … confrontation, and what I can tell you is that the situation is as bad as it can be,” Andrés said Friday on “The Hill on NewsNation.” “Hopefully, the amazing people of the U.N. and other organizations … we can make sure that the people are being taken care of. Food and water should be a universal right for every human on planet Earth.”
World Central Kitchen has served more than 11.5 million meals in Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas began in early October, the group says on its website. It recently opened its first kitchen in Gaza, enabling it to scale up operations and serve more food.
Andrés said the signs of war were visible when he was there: drones and jets flying overhead, gunshots ringing out and rockets and artillery exploding. Andrés and his group have also been on the ground in Ukraine as that country defends itself against a Russian invasion.
“I am worried about all the children that are every day going through all of this, not only in Gaza. We saw missiles or whatever Hamas is shooting from Palestine into Israel. At the end of the day, I’m only thinking about those children, (also) in Ukraine where Russians keep shooting at civilian buildings, at schools,” he said. “What I’m afraid of is that we have children in different parts of the world — Gaza, Israel, Ukraine — that they are going to sleep every night with one eye open because they don’t know when the next explosion is going to happen. I’m afraid of the day that we stop caring about those children.”