The Killing of the Gaza Chef

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This podcast episode investigates the mysterious death of Mahmud Almadhoun, a Palestinian chef and humanitarian who ran a soup kitchen in northern Gaza. After being killed in

Key takeaways

• Mahmud Almadhoun was unusually open about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including criticism of Hamas and the black market controlling food distribution.
• The investigation reveals how hospitals in Gaza are viewed through dual lenses—by civilians as medical sanctuaries and by Israeli intelligence as potential terrorist infrastructure.

Main topics

• Targeted killings in wartime
• Humanitarian aid in conflict zones

Notable quotes

"We see so much that you do not see." – An Israeli security official on the perceived hidden realities of war.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while there is no definitive proof, the evidence strongly suggests Mahmud Almadhoun may

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:25) Hello, hello. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see you. How's it Speaker 5 (0:30) going over there in New York? 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. Speaker 4 (0:48) That's awesome. That's Speaker 5 (0:49) nice. Speaker 5 (0:54) 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 Workweek 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 Repile 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. It was for the big German newspaper where Tim works now, Die Zeit. The series was an Speaker 4 (1:42) investigation into a mysterious death in Gaza. Speaker 5 (1:46) 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. Speaker 4 (1:52) Yeah, totally. So it's reported by a really excellent reporter named Yasin Musharabash, who I met like a week before I started at DeetSite. A friend of mine who also works here invited me to lunch with two of his colleagues, Britta and Yasin. Brita 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 Carre, great spy novelist. And Yassine was like, well, you know, I knew John le Carre. I was like, what? And he was like, not only did I know John le Carre, I worked with John le Carre. And I'm like, where did I land? What is going on here? Speaker 5 (2:34) In what capacity? Speaker 4 (2:36) Well, Yassine 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 Yassine starts like... working with him. And I guess they had a pretty good and active working relationship to the extent that when John Licari died, Yassine even spoke at his funeral. Wow. Yeah. And then like a minute later, Yassine was like, yeah, and I think you're going to be editing my podcast. I was like, oh, okay, cool. It's great. And he told me about this story that he had already started reporting. Speaker 5 (3:31) 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 Yassine 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. Speaker 4 (3:52) Starting in early 2024, Yassine and other colleagues at the site 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 are 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 Al Madoun, who is the... head of a soup kitchen in the north of Gaza in a place called Beit Lahiya. So he reaches out and Mahmoud is totally willing to talk to him. And Yasin 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. Speaker 5 (4:52) What do you mean? Because I imagine there's a lot people would be open about. How is his openness different? Speaker 4 (4:57) 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's able to get his hands on 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. Speaker 5 (6:00) 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. Speaker 5 (6:30) I enjoy that the story is asking them, and then I enjoy that the story begins to answer them, and the answers are not what I would have expected. Speaker 4 (6:36) 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. Speaker 5 (6:55) Tim, thank you for coming to share this story. I hope people find it as compelling as I did. Speaker 4 (7:00) It was my pleasure. Yeah, thank you. After the break, the mystery of Speaker 5 (7:04) the Gaza chef. Speaker 5 (7:14) Welcome back to the show. So, reporter Yassin Mousharboush wanted to know why a Palestinian chef named Mahmoud Al-Madoun 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. Speaker 5 (7:40) 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. Speaker 3 (7:51) 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. Speaker 3 (8:05) Once, as most Palestinians see it, a place where they bring injured relatives. And once, as Israeli intelligence services view it, as 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 Speaker 4 (8:32) that. Speaker 7 (8:36) The Speaker 4 (8:37) hospital was working normally and there were doctors and there were patients and all the patients were civilians. And among Speaker 3 (8:45) 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 the 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. Speaker 3 (9:21) What he meant was that he was absolutely certain there were secret meeting points for 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. Speaker 3 (9:52) 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. Kamal Adwan Hospital, Speaker 4 (10:03) 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. Speaker 3 (10:11) The war had only just begun when, in statements like this, the Israeli army declared Kamal Adwan Hospital a Hamas terrorist stronghold. Speaker 3 (10:22) What followed was a months-long confrontation around this hospital, which grew ever more violent. Speaker 7 (10:27) The World Health Organization is supporting this hospital to resume services after the attack that it has sustained back on the 22nd of May. Speaker 3 (10:36) 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. Speaker 7 (10:58) We saw Israeli troops at the gate. They went to the surgery department. Speaker 3 (11:02) 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. My name is Yassine Moucharouache and you are listening to The Gaza Chef. Episode 2, Sky in Flames. Speaker 7 (12:01) In Speaker 3 (12:02) the summer of 2025, I flew to Washington, D.C. 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