There is little to connect the Cornish towns of Penryn and Falmouth with the horrors of Gaza – apart from the killing of an aid worker from the close-knit community.
Outside the centre of Penryn, next to a rugby pitch, is a boxing gym that opened last summer and is dedicated to the memory of Jim Henderson.
He was killed by Israeli missiles that hit a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza.
On the side of the Henderson Academy is a mural dedicated to Jim, a former Royal Marine who was 33 when he died. It shows him in the boxing ring; boxing was his passion. He is also shown on the rugby pitch, wearing the shirt of the local club, Penryn RFC.
The mural was painted to mark the first anniversary of his death in April this year, and is intended as a space for reflection for his family and friends in West Cornwall, in the south-west of the UK.
“Jim was a popular guy, he had a lot of friends. He was away a lot, but he always made sure he would meet people, even if it was briefly,” said his brother, Matt Henderson.
Funds poured in quickly from locals who knew Jim to build the academy, which became the training space for the Falmouth and Penryn Amateur Boxing Club.
The club that keeps Jim’s legacy alive provides some comfort for his brother. “It was really important for me,” Matt told The National. “Our story is that out of something tragic, something terrible, we can find positives.”
When The National visited the club, artist Joe Greenway was adding some final touches to the mural.
But these tributes are overshadowed by the unanswered questions around Jim’s death. Matt feels his brother was let down by the institutions meant to protect him and seek justice.
Jim was one of seven aid workers killed by Israel in air strikes on April 1 last year, while working for World Central Kitchen. Drone operators fired three strikes at cars carrying aid to northern Gaza.
Israel’s investigation said the attack on the convoy had been a “grave mistake” and a case of mistaken identity. Two officers were sacked, and the brigade and division commanders reprimanded.
The Israeli ministry described how the survivors of the first strike ran to the second car, which was then attacked. Those who survived that strike ran to the third car, which was then also hit by a missile, killing all remaining workers in the convoy.
But calls for a more complete investigation have gone unanswered. The families feel the UK government is not doing enough to pressure Israel for updates, and that it has not been fully transparent about its knowledge of the facts.
“More than a year down the line now, and we've been asking the same questions for months and months,” Matt said.
“We've spoken to people on the ground in Gaza, and they give you different stories. They give you different names. Not everything's been shared with us,” he said.
“There's more [information] out there. It's just not been given, it's not been shared. My question is, why?” he said.
Unanswered questions
The Henderson family met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer this month, alongside the families of two other Britons killed in the attack, James Kirby and John Chapman.
“If anyone can influence or change decisions or mindset, it would be the leader of the country,” Matt said.
He said his family felt the visit was “positive” and that Mr Starmer “took on what the families were asking or talking about”.
“He seemed like he was going to make some effort to help get more answers and solutions for us,” he said.
Mr Starmer has changed his tone on Gaza recently, calling the humanitarian crisis there “intolerable”. The UK government also sanctioned two Israeli cabinet ministers this month, and recently suspended new trade talks with Israel, in a sign that support for the war was running thin.
Matt believes the Kirby and Chapman families are “on the same page” as him, feeling stuck in limbo and as though they are deliberately being kept in the dark.
But his hope rests on the coroner’s inquest at Avon Coroner’s Court near Bristol. “The coroner is moving in the right direction and is asking the right sort of questions that we would like to be asked,” he said, adding that the family could not influence the coroner's direction.
Last year, it was revealed that the Royal Air Force had video footage of Gaza from the day of the strike, but the Ministry of Defence has refused to publish it for security reasons.
It is not known whether the footage captures the moments leading up to the attack on the convoy, but Mr Henderson said shrouding the information in secrecy had only made matters worse for the family.
“We were expecting things like the footage that the RAF potentially have, or had, would be released to the public or [they would have] allowed the family to look at,” he said.
“There seems to be some information that's not been allowed to come out to us, or not allowed to come out to the public. It feels a little bit like the government are sat on it, and they're not letting all the information to be public, or at least maybe to families.”
“We're talking about big thing – people’s lives [lost] in that incident”
“What reason do the British government have to not share their information? If it's an accident, why do the Israeli government not share their information? If you make a mistake, you can show you've made a mistake,” he said.
“I have no peace at the moment from that. I can't accept that that's just an accident without showing me it's an accident,” Matt said.
While he praised the World Central Kitchen's aid work, he said there were certain things about the events surrounding Jim's death that need to be better explained by them.
“They need to be honest,” he said. “There is certainly a feeling that maybe they're not doing [the things] they should be doing or they weren't doing what could have helped or could have affected what happened then,” he said.
Andrew George, the MP for a neighbouring constituency in West Cornwall, said Jim’s killing had caused “secondary grief” in the area that kept the war in Gaza in “people’s minds”.
“The tragedy extends to our back door,” Mr George said in April, after returning from a trip to the occupied West Bank. “[Jim] was well known and liked in our community in a way that resonated across West Cornwall. It caused a secondary grief.”
“It certainly is in people's minds. My constituents consistently view it as the epicentre of wider world conflict,” he said.
He accused the British government of being “excessively lily-livered” over pressing Israel for an investigation.
Keeping Jim's legacy alive
Matt used to run a local football club, but stepped away from it to manage the Henderson Academy. The key challenge now is to ensure its success in the long term.
“When things like this have a lot of money thrown at it, it’s brilliant for a minute but you’ve got to be sustainable. You've got to keep the momentum going. You've got to keep trying to raise money. You've got to keep pushing it,” he said.
The gym trains boxers from age 10 upwards, but struggles to find enough qualified coaches. “The lads in there are committed. The coaches are committed. It's just all the things that they can't control,” he said.
The academy launched in time for its first season in August last year, and is currently on a break.
“I don't know a lot about boxing gyms. What I’ve learnt this year [is] it’s not testosterone, it's not egos. The biggest thing is respect and discipline,” Matt said. “It’s almost the opposite of what a lot of people would expect of boxing and a male-dominated environment.”
He hopes the club will start to attract female boxers and begin teaching children from a younger age, when the focus is on discipline rather than contact.
Matt is torn between the need to keep his brother’s case alive so the investigation does not get buried by those who would rather forget about it, and his horror at the humanitarian crisis and high death toll in Gaza, which has surpassed 55,000 people.
“That's whole families being killed. It’s not just my brother. Too many innocent people are dying,” he said.
“Although it's massive to me and my family, my brother's a very small part of this whole issue that's happening out there at the moment,” he said.
“Without more pressure from governments, I can't see that this ends well.”
