John Flickinger reportedly gave Anthony Blinken a piece of his mind when the secretary of state called to express condolences this week. The Florida man, whose 33-year-old son Jacob Flickinger was one of seven World Central Kitchen workers killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, urged Secretary Blinken to end the violence through real policy action, not just words. “If the United States threatened to suspend aid to Israel, maybe my son would be alive today,” Flickinger told the Associated Press as he recounted his 30-minute phone call with the secretary. “I’m hopeful that this is the last straw, that the United States will suspend aid and will take meaningful action to leverage change in the way Israel is conducting this war.” The strike on the aid workers, who were delivering food to starving Gazans, drove a bigger wedge between the allies, already at odds over the massive civilian death toll of over 30,000 Palestinians. Though Israel insisted the strike on the aid workers was a mistake, chef José Andrés, who leads the nonprofit they worked for, accused the IDF of deliberately targeting them.
