I would like to use this post to honor a veteran who lived in Quebec.

Jacob Flickinger was a US-Canadian citizen. He was killed Tuesday by Israeli military while delivering food aid in Gaza.

Flickinger was a retired master corporal who served 11 years in the Canadian Army, including a tour in Afghanistan. He was father and sole provider to a one-year-old son.

The founder of the food aid organization he was working for, which employs several of my former kitchen colleagues, has said the organization got permission from the Israeli military to be where they were, and kept the Israelis abreast of their exact location. Three vehicles in the aid convoy were destroyed in three separate air strikes within minutes.

The founder, Chef José Andrés, says they were targeted “systematically, car by car.” Flickinger was one of seven food aid workers killed in the strike.

Multiple Israeli military officials, since October 2023, have stated in interviews that “all” of Israel’s bombs and shells come from the U.S. One said, “We couldn’t do this if it wasn’t for the U.S.”

President Biden has sent at least one arms package per week to Israel since October, each of these packages just smaller than the size that U.S. law requires the White House to report to Congress, according to a Washington Post investigation. Legal experts have spoken out about how this “military aid” also runs afoul of a federal law that prohibits arms gifts or sales to countries that block humanitarian aid. (Foreign Assistance Act Section 620I)

Please join me in a moment of silence for Jacob Flickinger and his family.