The Killing of the Gaza Chef

Mahmud Almadhoun ran a soup kitchen in the north of the Gaza Strip. In November 2024, he was killed. A reporter tries to answer a big question. Was Mahmud intentionally targeted? And if so, what does that mean about the future of war? Listen to The Gaza Chef https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gaza-chef/id6787898538. Become a premium member! https://searchengine.supercast.com/

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• 2:32Speaker 01

  Hello, hello.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Good to see you.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  How's it going over there in New York?

• 2:37Speaker 00

  It's going well. It's like, you know, the part of summer where you remember that you forgot to go outside all summer. And the two things I need to do before summer's over is like, go to the beach and eat some fresh tomatoes. And I did both this week.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  That's awesome. That's nice.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  This is my dear old colleague, Tim Howard, a person who does not need to be reminded about the importance of a good summer vacation. It's practically his religion. A sometime activist for the National Four Day Work Week and a full-time radio genius. I worked with Tim for many years at a previous show called Reply All. He was the show's editor. Tim was the person who gave Reply All its signature weirdness, who built stories that ran on an engine of absurdity and adventure. When I think about episodes I loved from that old show, like Boy in Photo or Long Distance, I see Tim's bong-hit sense of adventure plastered all over them. But we were talking this week because over the summer, I'd been listening to a new series that he'd edited, which had captivated my attention.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  It was for the big German newspaper where Tim works now, Die Zeit. The series was an investigation into a mysterious death in Gaza.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  So I wanted to talk to you about your series. Like, I guess the first thing is just like, give me the origin story of this series existing.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. So it's reported by a really excellent reporter named Yassin Muscharbak, who I met like a week before I started at Die Zeit. A friend of mine who also works here invited me to lunch with two of his colleagues, Britta and Yassin. And Britta tells me about a podcast that she's working on. And I was like, ah, that kind of reminds me a little bit of like John le Carré, great spy novelist. And Yassin was like, well, you know, I knew John le Carré. I was like, what? And he was like, not only did I know John le Carré, I worked with John le Carré.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  And I'm like, where did I land? What is going on here?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  In what capacity?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Well, Yassin has been reporting on the Middle East for like 25 years. And he is an expert on a lot of things Middle East. And he's also an expert on Islamist terrorism. And at one point, John le Carré reached out to him and was like, I'm looking for somebody who can help me with the novels I'm working on. Basically, I need somebody who is an expert on Islamist terrorism in Europe. And so Yassin starts like working with him. And I guess they had a pretty good and active working relationship to the extent that when John le Carré died, Yassin even spoke at his funeral.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then like a minute later, Yassin was like, yeah, and I think you're going to be editing my podcast. I was like, oh, okay, cool. That's great. And, um, and he told me about this story that he had already started reporting.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  This is The Wonderful Mind of Tim Howard, where every question provokes a story, which usually reminds him of another even better story. It's a place that I very much enjoy hanging out. Anyway, Tim told me how Yassin had found himself curious about this one particular story, the one that had launched this investigation. That investigation would take them to some surprising places, some of them very dark.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Starting in early 2024, Yassin and other colleagues at Die Zeit had been hearing these rumors of horrific malnutrition in Gaza and of children dying of malnutrition because not enough food was getting in. But it was also a really difficult thing to report because journalists not allowed to go to Gaza. So they start calling around, looking for people that they can talk to, just to like, report out this story about malnutrition. And the by far best source who Yassin meets in the process is this guy Mahmoud Ahmadoun, who is the head of a soup kitchen in the north of Gaza in a place called Beit Liah. So he reaches out and Mahmoud is totally willing to talk to him.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And Yassin was also really just surprised that Mahmoud spoke really openly about everything that was happening in a way that is not what he was used to have happening with other people there, with doctors, with nurses, with ordinary people living in Gaza.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  What do you mean? Like, because I imagine there's a lot of people would be open about. How is his openness different?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Primarily about Hamas. He was willing to talk critically about what was happening with the aid deliveries that were coming to Gaza that were supposed to be going directly to people. He spoke very openly about the black market there, which meant like, food was coming in, but you could only get it if you had a lot of money. And the average people didn't have money, which is part of the reason there's so much malnutrition. And Yassin stays in touch with Mahmoud as the situation in Gaza gets way, way worse. More bombings, way more people dying, people fleeing. And then Mahmoud dies. And Yassin doesn't know how he's killed. There's no eyewitnesses. He has nobody who can tell him what happened. All he is able to get his hands on,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  after a lot of calling around, is a video of Mahmoud's corpse. And Yassin, he wanted to basically know, could he solve this? Why exactly was Mahmoud killed? And that is what the podcast is. It's this attempt to solve this mystery through this tiny little keyhole.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, what I, it felt to me, both morally and formally audacious to say, if a true crime story treats the fact of someone's death as a really important thing that needs to be understood, this was a true crime story asking why and how someone had died in a place where people are being killed all the time. And there are some real questions about what exactly happened with him that are pretty strange and pretty mysterious. And I enjoy that the story is asking them. And then I enjoyed that the story begins to answer them and the answers are not what I would have expected.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  That's how I felt too. And I ended up learning a lot more about Mahmoud as a person, but I also ended up learning about the circumstances of his death way more than you would think you could at the very beginning. And it ends up being basically a tracer fluid on the way that the war is conducted by the IDF.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Tim, thank you for coming to share this story. I hope people find it as compelling as I did.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  It was my pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  After the break, the mystery of the Gaza chef. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by MUBI. If you're tired of endlessly scrolling through streaming algorithms designed for passive background noise, you need to check out MUBI. MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world, curating and elevating visionary filmmaking that's handpicked always. It's the kind of platform for movies you'll actually watch, fall in love with and keep thinking and talking about long after the credits roll. One of their newest exclusive titles is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, directed by visionary writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, who you might know from I Saw the TV Glow. It's a world-expanding, genre-bending wonder

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• 11:32Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the show. So reporter Yassin Musyarbush wanted to know why a Palestinian chef named Mahmoud Almadoun had been killed, specifically whether his work trying to get food to starving Palestinians had made him a target. So Yassin started making phone calls. He spoke to members of Mahmoud's family, who said, "Look, you need to specifically examine Mahmoud's connection to the local hospital." So Yassin did. And everything he found, that actually comprises episode two of his series, The Gaza Chef, which is what we're going to play for you now. I'll let Yassin take it from here.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  In the fall of 2023, as the Israeli offensive begins, there are 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip. But in a way, each of these hospitals exists twice. Ones, as most Palestinians see it, a place where they bring injured relatives. And ones, as Israeli intelligence services view it, is a place from which danger emanates because terrorists use it for their purposes. In fact, this is one of the most contested questions in this war. I know many ordinary Palestinians who say these accusations are nonsense. I have never seen anything like that.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  The hospital was working normally, and there were doctors, and there were patients, and all the patients were civilians.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  And among them are people I find credible. On the other hand, take this Israeli guy I know, for instance, who worked for the security services for ages. He and I had a fairly heated discussion about this subject, not least because I pointed out to him that Israeli evidence was sometimes rather thin, and that even reputable media outlets had voiced suspicions that some of it may have been manipulated. "How am I supposed to deal with that?" I asked him. He replied, somewhat irritated by my questions, "Yassin, we see so much that you do not see." What he meant was that he was absolutely certain there were secret meeting points for

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Hamas commanders inside these hospitals, that there were routes nobody knew about through which weapons were brought in and back out again. He didn't care whether Hamas or anybody else denied all of it, he was convinced it was true. This is why hospitals are under such scrutiny from the IDF in this war. A case in point is the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is located right in Mahmoud's neighborhood, a maybe seven or eight-minute walk away from the house where he was last living.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Kamal Adwan Hospital, located in northern Gaza, has for a long period of time been a part of Hamas's strategy and used as a major terrorist stronghold.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  The war had only just begun when, in statements like this, the Israeli army declared Kamal Adwan Hospital a Hamas terrorist stronghold. What followed was a months-long confrontation around this hospital, which grew ever more violent.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  The World Health Organization is supporting this hospital to resume services after the attack that it has sustained back in the 22nd of May.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  There are clashes between the IDF and Palestinian militants in the vicinity of the hospital. The IDF says weapons were discovered nearby. There are airstrikes, and on several occasions, the army even enters the hospital and detains staff, including the director, whom it will later accuse of being a Hamas operative.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  We saw Israeli troops at the gate. They went to the surgery department.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  In the autumn of 2024, this escalation reaches its peak. And here is something I genuinely had not expected. Of all places, it is here that Mahmoud, the chef of the soup kitchen, keeps showing up, right up until shortly before his death. And I wanted to know why.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  My name is Yassin Musyarbush, and you are listening to The Gaza Chef. Episode two, Sky in Flames.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington DC. In the summer of 2025, I flew to Washington DC to visit Hani, Mahmoud's older brother, who's been living in the United States for 25 years and is the only member of Mahmoud's family I was able to meet in person, because the others are all in the Gaza Strip. Hani works for UNRWA USA. That's an NGO that supports the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees. And on a very hot and extremely humid day, we met at a Korean restaurant.

• 16:48Speaker 06

  It's a good place, huh?

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Perfect. Hani's a rather quiet man, in his mid-40s, serious but kind. We took a seat outside on the terrace. Okay, so this should be recording now. Brilliant.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, so yeah, let's talk.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I like your T-shirt. You're wearing a T-shirt of the Gaza Soup Kitchen.

• 17:07Speaker 06

  In honor of you.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Of course, yes. Hani was wearing the T-shirt in honor of his brother Mahmoud. Mahmoud was younger than you by how many years?

• 17:15Speaker 06

  Easily 10 years, 11 years.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  11 years, you're a junior.

• 17:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Okay. And when he was born, you guys lived where exactly?

• 17:25Speaker 06

  So Mahmoud was born in Gaza immediately after we left the Emirates.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Hani told me that his parents, he himself, and eight of his siblings had lived in the United Arab Emirates until 1990, where his father worked as a teacher. When the older daughters were old enough to think about marriage, the family returned.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  So all of us went back to Gaza. Mahmoud was born there. He's the baby.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And so Mahmoud, the youngest, was the only child born in the Gaza Strip. After their return to Gaza, Hani told me, the family were actually doing quite well. His father continued working as an English teacher and also ran a shop, selling kitchen appliances and household items on the side. In Bet Liah, that placed them in the upper-middle class. The children attended the local public school. And Mahmoud, after he grew up a little bit, would have gone to a public school as well?

• 18:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, but Mahmoud is unique in our family because he hated school. He would run away from kindergarten. He was so radical in not liking school. And I would literally remember dragging him from his bed to go to the kindergarten, and he wouldn't, he wouldn't go.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Mahmoud, Hani says, always had a way of doing only what he wanted to do. As a child and teenager, Mahmoud was a bit of a slacker, a chiller. Not only did he dislike school, he constantly brought new friends home, people he had just picked up somewhere, which his parents did not approve of.

• 18:56Speaker 06

  And my family would get upset with them because he's too hospitable with the wrong people.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  They worried about the family's reputation.

• 19:02Speaker 06

  My parents were like, "Ah, this is not good. You should only invite people who add value to your life. These guys are not it."

• 19:09Speaker 02

  But as for trying to get ahead in life, that was not a priority for Mahmoud. He left school after just nine years. When he was 18, he got married, even though his own mother thought him far too immature for it. And yet, for a moment, it looked as though things might be going reasonably well. Mahmoud went on to open a mobile phone shop, and it actually was rather successful. But then came a setback. Mahmoud became dependent on painkillers.

• 19:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was really bad for the family. He would just take the painkiller and then just zone out. Like, he's there, but he's not really there.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Was that, did it start with a disease or with an injury?

• 19:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, it started with a back injury. He will just sit there and just not know what's going on around him. And you could tell, like, the guy is high.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  That was a bit bad.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  It was really bad. And then at some point, and it was bad because he will be sitting with a bunch of guys in his house, and he's like, like, he's there, but he's just some other place. And that's just for the family. Like, what the hell? These people are strangers, your wife is across the other room, like, what's going on?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  It was only when the family stepped in and staged an intervention that Mahmoud managed to overcome this phase. What helped him in the process was a new passion he developed: cooking.

• 20:33Speaker 06

  And he really went to cooking as a way to distract himself. Yeah, he, it was, you could tell he is like zoning out when he's cooking. He's in there, just in the kitchen. It's him, often lounging in his boxers, just hanging out and cooking food.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  He even asked around at local restaurants about cooking techniques and special spices. And Hani told me what mattered most to him was that everyone would gather on Friday afternoons to eat together at his place.

• 21:04Speaker 06

  He's the guy, he's the chef. He roasts the chicken in the oven, he saucers the rice, and just really takes it like an art.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  If it had been up to Mahmoud, life might simply have carried on like that. He had no grand designs. But then...

• 21:21Speaker 07

  Today, Israel battled to repel a surprise invasion of its territory.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  On October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacks Israel. And at the end of the month, the Israeli ground offensive begins in the north of the Gaza Strip, and everything changes in an instant. Hani is sitting in Washington, almost 10,000 kilometers away, consuming every bit of news he can find, trying to stay in touch with his relatives. And for his younger brother, his entire world collapses. Mahmoud's phone shop, located in the center of Bet Liah, is completely destroyed by a tank. Ali can salvage his laptop and a few chairs.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Overnight, Mahmoud is unemployed, with no income at all. For Hani, it is all so far away and yet unimaginably real. In December 2023, with the war only a few weeks old, Hani is scrolling through a Palestinian Telegram channel he reads every morning, and he comes across a disturbing video from his hometown, Bet Liah.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  In the video, hundreds of Palestinian men can be seen stripped down to their underwear, sitting in rows on the battleground, heads bent between their knees. Beside them stand armed Israeli soldiers. The soldiers have rounded them up and detained them for questioning, searching among them for Hamas fighters.

• 22:57Speaker 06

  I look and they're like, damn, this looks like Mahmoud.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  What were your emotions when you saw your brother on that video?

• 23:06Speaker 06

  Well, there was confusion that day because there had been other groups that released Palestinian flying folded and put in over a ditch. So we did not want to end up in a situation like that.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  There are all sorts of rumors swirling around about terrible things happening to detainees, things Hani can't verify but which terrify him. What if Mahmoud disappears? What if he ends up in a secret prison?

• 23:31Speaker 06

  And I just did not want my brother to be gone for, you know, for no reason.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  It's a horrifying prospect, and the uncertainty lasts for 20 hours. Then the Israeli soldiers release Mahmoud. But Hani knows that this could happen again to his brother at any moment, and that the next time, it could end up far worse.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  And while Hani is still trying to figure out how to protect his younger brother, something happens that will complicate everything even further. At the end of 2023, as Israel all but cuts off the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and reports of hunger multiply, acquaintances approach Hani, and they hand him a cash donation.

• 24:16Speaker 06

  I call up Mahmoud and say, hey Mahmoud, I have $2,000. What can we do with them? He said, hey, there is a guy in Jabalya market, he still cooks rice. Let me go buy some rice wraps from them. So he bought like 50 of them and just gave them away to the neighbors. This guy had rice. We go the next day, we buy more rice.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  So Mahmoud buys the rice and distributes it. But that only works until the third day, when the rice seller tells him, sorry.

• 24:41Speaker 06

  I don't have rice, that's it. We're like, shit, what do we do?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Because on the fourth day, people are once again standing at Mahmoud's door. They are hungry and they want something to eat. And then Mahmoud calls Hani and says.

• 24:52Speaker 06

  Hani, what do you think? I have an idea. He said, I'm gonna cook.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  How are you going to do that, Hani asks, cook in the middle of a famine? I'll manage, Mahmoud says, and he gets hold of a few large pots, tomato sauce, canned vegetables, potatoes, peas, really anything he can find. He throws it all into the pots and cooks. And that day, around 120 families eat Mahmoud's food.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  It's the birth of the soup kitchen.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  In Washington DC, it dawns on Hani that something is taking shape in Beit Lahia. And he responds, he starts fundraising in earnest now, launches a campaign and sets up a GoFundMe account.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  So people start donating every day, like where is a thousand dollars, 1500, and we send the money to Mahmoud to cook.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  And the campaign proves far more successful than Hani and his fellow organizers had expected at the outset. I remember watching from Berlin in April 2024 as the GoFundMe page showed that more than $100,000 were raised in just four weeks. These donations make it possible for Mahmoud to secure ingredients, and they allow the soup kitchen to distribute the meals free of charge.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  Eventually, we raised a million dollars. We're like, shit, this is a real deal.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  In their daily phone calls, it becomes apparent to Hani how his younger brother, the aimless slacker, is finding his own mission in the middle of a war, transforming into a man of action.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  He found his mojo, he found his zen, because he felt needed and he was able to respond.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  The soup kitchen is the heart of it all. But whenever Hani has a suggestion for a new project to add, Mahmoud puts it into practice at once. For instance, when Hani asks him.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Hey Mahmoud, can you build a school? He said, fuck yeah. And he builds a school in two weeks and delivers it, and it's amazing.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Thirty children receive lessons in this makeshift school. And on the roof, they put up a sign that reads, "School, please don't bomb," in English and Hebrew. Next, the team sets up a medical first aid point, for which they even hire a doctor. And now Mahmoud is constantly on the move in Beit Lahia.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  You got the kitchen here, the school here, and the medical point here. So Mahmoud would be like going between the three while he's cooking. Who's, what do you need? Let me buy you diapers. What do you need? Let me get you some food. So he would cook for the school as well.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  In the spring of 2024, the surrounding hospitals begin asking for food for their patients and staff. And Mahmoud says, sure, of course, we'll help. It's a decision that will prove consequential. From that point on, Mahmoud regularly sets aside one or two pots of food and brings them to the hospitals, above all, to Kamal Adwan Hospital.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  So he started getting food to the hospital, especially Kamal Adwan Hospital, because they had the kids, he relates for mad nourished, they're a new mad nourished kids. And you could walk from our kitchen in about 10 minutes by the time you get there.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  The Gaza Soup Kitchen quickly becomes a success story. But Hani in Washington knows that humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip aren't safe. Many of them have already been killed. And now Mahmoud has created a magnet in the middle of a war zone, a place that hundreds of people come to every day. If you were to advise a civilian in Gaza, you would tell them, hide, don't draw attention to yourself, keep your head down, in the hope that this offers the greatest degree of safety. Mahmoud, of course, does the exact opposite. He makes himself visible. He stands out.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  And the longer Hani thinks about it, the clearer it becomes to him. There is only one thing he can do to help protect his brother. Make Mahmoud even more visible. Make Mahmoud and his soup kitchen as well-known as possible, internationally ideally. His hope is that the Israeli army will think twice about where it bombs if there is a risk of hitting a prominent aid initiative. Hani Almudun is Mahmoud's brother and based in the US. So Hani begins speaking to Western and international media about the soup kitchen.

• 29:04Speaker 06

  A lot of people say the Palestinians, but the land did not, you know, he'd be cooking whatever he can find. Is it enough? No.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Hani says those interviews felt like walking a tightrope. He was raw, with grief at the scale of the destruction in Gaza, and furious.

• 29:19Speaker 06

  You wake up every day and somebody punches you in the face with all the horrible news. No, this person is dead, this person is killed. And you're like, it's a gallery of trauma.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  But he also knew that he had to restrain himself.

• 29:30Speaker 06

  I can't be shouting slogans and shit. I can't say like, Israel is killing my people and they're committing war crimes.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Instead, he had to look into the cameras and politely answer questions for uplifting stories about the soup kitchen.

• 29:43Speaker 08

  What does a hot meal mean to somebody?

• 29:46Speaker 06

  It means survival, it means somebody sees you.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  And that was not easy.

• 29:50Speaker 06

  In some of these interviews, I wanted to scream.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  But his campaign works. In April 2024, Hani manages to get an opinion piece by Mahmoud, published in The Washington Post. In it, Mahmoud describes the famine in the north of the Gaza Strip. Over the past weeks, we have seen infants die of hunger, their bodies shrunken into skeletons and once thriving children reduced to skin and bone. He also speaks about a friend who was killed by a drone while trying to reach aid supplies dropped from an aircraft. Mahmoud describes his own role in simple terms, like this.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I have nothing to do with the fighting in Gaza. I am a shopkeeper.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  But in the north of the Gaza Strip, at that point, no one sees Mahmoud as a shopkeeper. He's the face of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, and little by little, he becomes a local celebrity.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  He's even given a nickname, Assad Ashmal, Lion of the North.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  But is that enough? Hani has his doubts. Are there other ways to make him safe? Perhaps? Or is it a completely mad idea to inform the Israeli army about the Gaza Soup Kitchen?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Hani decides to try exactly that. He takes the precise GPS coordinates of the soup kitchen, the first aid point, and the school, the three places between which Mahmoud moves, and sends them to people he believes may have an in with the IDF. With the idea that they would pass them on?

• 31:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what, that's the point. There is a UN Coordination Office that we got in touch with and we gave them.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Hani informs one person who works on the National Security Council at the White House, and another person who's involved in coordinating humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip for the United Nations. And finally, he turns to an institution called COGAT. COGAT stands for Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. COGAT is part of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and in this war, it is tasked with coordinating the entry of humanitarian aid and making arrangements with aid organizations. So, okay, I need to get this.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Was COGAT ever made aware of the operations of the Gaza Soup?

• 32:09Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah, a few times.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  When did it start? Who did it go through?

• 32:14Speaker 06

  So, I have an Israeli friend of mine here, he's a peace activist, a good human being. I've approached him and said, hey, here is the COGAT number. Can you get in touch with them and tell them who we are, what we're doing, and where we're located?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I have spoken to Hani's friend. He wishes to remain anonymous, so in this podcast, I will simply refer to him as Ron. And Ron told me that the entire time he was exchanging messages with COGAT, he never really knew who exactly he was talking to. Staff members kept changing. But to him, it sounded as though the COGAT people were guiding him through some sort of accreditation process, so that the soup kitchen might perhaps be formally recognized as an institution. So when COGAT wanted to know who exactly worked at the soup kitchen, how it was funded, and what equipment it had, Hani and Ron told them. So, the United Nations, the White House, COGAT, three channels.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  If even one of them works in the way that Hani was hoping, then the IDF would know how to reach Mahmoud and where the soup kitchen and its offshoots are located. The message Hani is sending is clear: We have nothing to hide, and Mahmoud poses no threat. Whether the Israelis believe him, he doesn't know.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  In October 2024, the war enters its second year, and conditions in the north of the Gaza Strip are now becoming truly catastrophic.

• 33:47Speaker 09

  Israel is pounding northern Gaza. Its airstrikes described by the UN as relentless.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Mahmoud and his family experienced the horrors at close quarters. For example, when the small makeshift school built by the soup kitchen team, whose coordinates they had given to Kogad, is hit. Fortunately, no one is injured.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Alaa, Mahmoud's wife, told me in several phone conversations that, at the time, she was pregnant and very scared. And that she said to Mahmoud, "We have to flee. Let's get out of here."

• 34:30Speaker 02

  "All right," Mahmoud replies, "I'll organize a way out for you and the children." But Alaa says, "No, we only go together. I don't want to flee alone." But Mahmoud refuses to leave. And he carries on, even though work in the soup kitchen has by now become extremely dangerous.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  I also spoke by phone with Mahmoud's sister, Fatin, who'd worked in the soup kitchen with Mahmoud from the very beginning. She told me that there was constant shelling, that drones and helicopters were overhead while they cooked all the time.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  And then came the phone calls.

• 35:08Speaker 10

  The IDF spoke with me, "Why are you still here in the north? Come on, go to the south."

• 35:14Speaker 10

  "I said, 'I don't want to.'" They said, "That's not up to you."

• 35:22Speaker 02

  This sounds crazy, but calls like these are not uncommon. They happen tens of thousands of times over. A special unit of Israeli military intelligence is responsible for them.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Fatin says to Mahmoud, "I'm afraid. Let's go." But he doesn't want to go. He tells her, "No one dies before their time."

• 35:45Speaker 02

  "Please stay with me," Mahmoud asks her. He needs her in the soup kitchen.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  And Fatin agrees. She keeps working. Until the day that the Israeli army sends drones circling exactly over the kitchen and then drops stun grenades.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Fatin says to him, "How can we carry on when the whole sky is in flames?" A short while later, Mahmoud too seems to accept, if they continue letting those in need come to the soup kitchen, people will die. So from now on, they'll do differently. They will bring the food to where the people already are, and that means to Kamal Adwan Hospital. Because by that point, hundreds of people, perhaps more than 1,000, are sheltering there. Among them are relatives of medical staff, families of patients, but also ordinary residents of Beit Lahayah, who all hope they will be safer there. But they are not.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  At the beginning of October 2024, the Israeli army demands that the entire hospital be evacuated. Because Hamas has allegedly reestablished itself there. The acting director of the hospital refuses. In turn...

• 37:05Speaker 02

  On October 25, 2024, the Israeli army forcibly enters the hospital complex.

• 37:12Speaker 11

  Those pictures that we are looking at there, that's Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, which has, of course, been under siege for 21 days by the Israeli army.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  The assault unfolds chaotically. Soldiers enter the hospital and detain large numbers of people, mostly staff members, all alleged terror suspects. There are reports of bulldozers driving into the courtyard, flattening tents. A fire breaks out, and there are apparently fatalities as well. Then, after two days, the IDF withdraws.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  From that point on, there's a kind of control ring around the hospital. Surveillance drones buzz overhead. Tanks are sometimes positioned nearby. It is now even more dangerous to get in and out of the hospital.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  There's a video showing Mahmoud and two colleagues from the Gaza Soup Kitchen during this period pushing a squeaking metal cart through the ruins of Beit Lahayah towards Kamal Adwan Hospital.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  On either side are destroyed buildings. The cart is loaded with aid supplies. And even on the video, you can hear the humming of surveillance drones.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  "We will keep going, just as we promised," Mahmoud says. When he reaches the hospital now, he sees the aftermath of the Israeli assault directly before him. Outside the entrance, a destroyed ambulance, rubble in the courtyard. Inside, cables hanging from the ceilings. Walls have collapsed completely or are blackened by fire. Along the corridors and passageways lie mattresses, where displaced people are seeking shelter.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  And Hani told me that on every one of Mahmoud's visits to the hospital during this period, he meets Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the acting director, usually in his office.

• 39:19Speaker 06

  He would be there by 9, 10, and he would call me, "Hani, Dr. Hussam needs this medicine, or they need this."

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Dr. Abu Safiya tells them what they need most urgently in the hospital. And Hani helps from Washington to source it, and Mahmoud then delivers it. There are photographs showing Mahmoud handing over cleaning wipes, baby formula, clothes, and blankets. Sometimes he also distributes money to hospital staff, who are no longer receiving salaries. Can we say that Mahmoud becomes a lifeline for these people in terms of...

• 39:51Speaker 06

  I mean, you could say that 10 times over.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  By this point, Mahmoud, the chef, is keeping the hospital alive.

• 39:59Speaker 06

  Nobody else is taking credit for that.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And Mahmoud and Dr. Abu Safiya develop a close relationship in this time.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  And Mahmoud and Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya become besties. Whenever he needs something, he calls Mahmoud.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  It's quite clear that Mahmoud admires the doctor. You can hear it, for example, in this audio message that Hani shared with me, in which Mahmoud praises the doctor to donors in the United States.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  This video, doctor, the one I sent you, the man in front of you is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital. He's a man of integrity, who has dedicated his entire life to serving his people.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  At the end of November 2024, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is hit during an Israeli drone attack inside the hospital, wounded in the leg and the back. And three days later, he sends an appeal for help to the international community from inside the hospital.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  And it is Mahmoud who records this video for him.

• 41:07Speaker 12

  "I'm speaking to you from inside the intensive care unit after there has been a development in my condition.

• 41:13Speaker 12

  Bleeding at the side of my wound. I will probably need a vascular surgeon. And unfortunately, we must now ask for what we had previously requested for our patients."

• 41:28Speaker 02

  The doctor survives. But only a month later, the Israeli army again enters Kamal Adwan Hospital. Dr. Abu Safiya is abducted by the IDF and taken to a military detention facility inside Israel. The pediatrician the IDF maintains holds a rank within Hamas and is alleged to be involved in potential terrorist activity.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  I asked Hani about these allegations. What do you have to say about the Israeli allegations against, one, the Kamal Adwan Hospital?

• 42:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That it's a Hamas headquarters of sorts, or used to be? And B, Dr. Abu Safiya personally?

• 42:06Speaker 06

  I don't really bother myself with the Israeli sales. And this is from the heart. Like, we know that Hussam is not a political guy. We know him very well.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Hani told me that his family and the Abu Safiya family have known each other for a very long time.

• 42:20Speaker 06

  He's a neighbor of ours, and we had a business, and he used to be a customer. Him and his wife used to come and buy gifts. Wherever you go, you don't go empty-handed to people's houses. So they're always stopping by. He's a friend of the family, and we like him, and he's a hero.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  To Hani, Dr. Abu Safiya is a hero. To the Israeli army, well, he's a doctor, okay. But at the same time, in their eyes, he's an active Hamas member.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  And Mahmoud? What about Mahmoud? What does the IDF actually see when they see Mahmoud? A humanitarian worker? Or a helper of Hamas? Hani says that notion is absurd.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  In our family, we have a personal animosity against them.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Because when Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, it was one of their relatives who stood in the Islamists' way.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  The last standing person in their way is our cousin Sami Al Madhoun.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  This man was, in fact, the commander of the Armed Wing of Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  And there is an old YouTube video showing him being dragged through the streets of Gaza before he's killed.

• 43:37Speaker 06

  They grabbed him, they lynched him, they murdered him. June 14, 2007.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  So Fahani, then the matter is clear. He isn't Hamas and neither is Mahmoud. Now, of course, it is practically impossible to prove that someone is not something. And that is especially difficult when trying to establish that from afar. Even so, I also do not believe Mahmoud belonged to Hamas. But I believe that on the basis of other indications, indications I consider stronger than what Hani told me. First of all, and for the record, I did, of course, ask all the relevant Israeli authorities whether they had ever suspected Mahmoud of being a Hamas man. I asked the IDF, the domestic intelligence agency Shinbeat, and Kogad. But they never answered the question. Not helpful, but all right.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Then, however, I learned something significant. Namely this: Mahmoud was not detained by the IDF just once. No, he was detained a second time in 2024. And according to Hani, on that second occasion, Mahmoud behaved very differently from the first time around.

• 44:47Speaker 06

  In the second one, he mustered the courage and told the officer, "Listen, my brother is American and he goes to the White House."

• 44:53Speaker 02

  And in fact, this time around, the soldiers let him go almost immediately.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  So once again, Mahmoud is rounded up and detained twice. And both times, he's released. I discussed this with Shalom Ben Hanan, an Israeli who served for 27 years in the domestic intelligence service Shinbeat, most recently as a department head. And he says to him, this does not sound like the story of a Hamas member.

• 45:21Speaker 13

  My assessment and according to my experience, and without knowing really his file, but if he is really was detained twice and was released after a few hours. Look, we don't arrest people to release them and then to shoot missiles on them. It's crazy. It's not logical.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 45:42Speaker 13

  Okay? He was already arrested. If he had a file, okay, that could cost him with a long arrest. Okay, you would send to prison.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 13

  As simple as that.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  In other words, if the IDF had possessed information indicating that Mahmoud was a Hamas man, they would have held on to him.

• 46:04Speaker 13

  Even for targeted killing operations, if you have the option to arrest them, you will always prefer to arrest them.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  The detentions by the army, the stun grenades at the soup kitchen, then the siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital, it seems as though nothing could stop Mahmoud. Even as more and more people around him are killed, including a member of the soup kitchen team, he carries on. He carries on even after the Bet Liah market square is turned into a makeshift cemetery. Mahmoud tells his brother, "I feel as though I could be next."

• 46:45Speaker 02

  And even some of the people closest to him can't understand Mahmoud's determination. Abu Khalid, his brother-in-law, for instance, who I also spoke to by phone.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  I said to him, "What is the point of this anymore? Why are you still doing this?"

• 47:06Speaker 02

  But Mahmoud replied that he had to distribute vegetables and help the patients until his final breath.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  In the end, it is two very personal experiences that Sheikh Mahmoud's resolve. First, on November 19, 2024, his seventh child is born, his daughter Eileen. And then, a week later, his son Omar is wounded. Omar, a teenager, was helping a man carry his belongings in the street when the two of them came under fire. Omar is taken to a hospital, given blood transfusion. He undergoes eye surgery. He survives. It is only after this that Mahmoud makes his decision.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  That day, November 30, 2024, begins unusually early for Mahmoud and his wife, Allah. By 6:00 in the morning, both of them are already awake. And amid the inferno of Bet Liah, they spend a few quiet hours together as Allah remembers it.

• 48:14Speaker 14

  We mostly listened to the news to see what might happen. There was talk about a possible ceasefire.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Allah has been asking Mahmoud for some time to flee, to gather all of them.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  And for the first time, Mahmoud agrees.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  "All right," he says to Allah, "we are going. You, me, and the children." Before that, though, he says, he has just one thing left to do.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  He's expecting a food delivery, he says, and wants to take it to the hospital. Allah should get breakfast ready in the meantime and make tea.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Allah is relieved and nervous. Sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. that morning, Mahmoud leaves the house. But he doesn't get far. 20 or 30 steps, perhaps. And then he is struck by a projectile from the sky.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  News of his brother's death reaches Hani in Washington at dawn.

• 49:23Speaker 06

  And I felt my knees collapse. I was like, "No, no, no."

• 49:32Speaker 02

  And Hani wonders whether it was a mistake to contact Kogad and share Mahmoud's phone number and coordinates with them. Roughly 48 hours before Mahmoud's death, he and his friend Ron had sent data to Kogad one last time. Had the information been used to help kill Mahmoud? Hani doesn't know. And neither do I, because Kogad didn't respond to any of my questions. But of one thing, Hani is absolutely convinced that the Israeli army killed his brother Mahmoud deliberately and on purpose.

• 50:10Speaker 06

  Because remember, they wanted Kamal Adwan to be emptied out, and he was prolonging the process.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  I consider that a possibility. At any rate, I can't rule it out. The IDF does carry out targeted killings. There are numerous examples. But when I asked the IDF about this, the response was not very helpful. In September 2025, I sent the IDF spokesperson the approximate coordinates of the place where Mahmoud died and the approximate time of his death. And I asked again, "Did you kill Mahmoud? And if so, why?" And all they said was...

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Like we said, the IDF is unaware of a strike in the coordinates and time provided.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  No one can tell me anything. No one wants to have known anything. Is that plausible? To find out, we have to look behind closed doors. We have to go into the engine room of the Israeli army and the Israeli intelligence services. And that is what the next episode of The Gaza Chef will be about.

• 51:39Speaker 00

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  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by LabCorp. As we roll into October and the craziness of the upcoming holiday season starts ramping up, it's easy to put ourselves on the back burner. But knowing your body and taking stock of your health is an ongoing journey that really pays off in the long run. This October, if you're ready to make health testing a ritual, LabCorp On Demand is an easy and convenient way to start. Simply visit their website and choose from a suite of more than 100 health tests, from hormone and sexual health to micronutrient and fitness. Purchase your test, then visit the LabCorp location closest to you for testing. Within just days, you'll receive results that are accurate, easy to understand, and coming from a lab doctor's trust. It's an incredible tool to help you stay proactive,

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• 54:54Speaker 02

  The Gaza Chef is a podcast of Die Zeit in cooperation with Pool Artists. The story was reported and told by me, Yasin Musyarbush. Tim Howard was my editor and our universal secret weapon. Britta Stuf was our storytelling consultant. Pierre Rauschenberger was the producer. The title theme is by Joscha Grunewald, based on an idea by me. Sound design, Tim Howard, with material by Joscha Grunewald, Tim Howard and Blue Dot Sessions. Editional sound design was done by Christian Küker, Pool Artists. Recording, editing and post-production, Markus Gläser of Die Zeit and Christian Küker, Pool Artists. The fact checking was done by Die Zeit's Luisa Hommerich.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Sohal Maia and Phras Halasen Aman helped with the investigation and with translations. Original audio research support, Karl Friedrichs and Alicia Kler. Voice service by Sebastian Horn, Tim Howard, Özge Inan, Jörg Lauth, Daniel Müller, Malon Schröder and Rose Tremlett. Ole Pflüger and Konstanze Keinz are the heads of the podcast department at Die Zeit. Milizat Terkelyeva was the project leader at Pool Artists. Legal advisor, Jörg Knabert Hamburg. Cover by Lea Dole. Picture editor, Michael Pfister. Special thanks go to Bastian Berbner, Hanna Grunewald, Janis Kamesin, Anne Kunze, Stefan Lebert, Katarina Lobenstein, Sabine Rückert and Helena Schmidt.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  If you have any feedback, you can reach us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. The Gaza Chef was originally published in German under the title Der Koch von Gaza and you can find it wherever you find your podcasts.

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