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Hamas and the Red Cross

(Quillette) Gerald M. Steinberg - More than 250 captives were seized from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Not one of the Israeli abductees received a visit from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the organization ostensibly responsible for implementing the requirements of the Geneva Convention. The Red Cross did not provide a shred of information to the families regarding the condition of the captives because, as its own official statements blandly insist, without the agreement of Hamas, "the ICRC cannot act." This is technically correct, but the problem is that the ICRC was largely passive and failed to use its vast prestige to demand access to the hostages or campaign for their release. Red Cross officials failed to press Hamas to follow basic humanitarian and legal principles on the treatment of its "prisoners." In 2024, the ICRC in Israel sent only seven tweets that mentioned the Israelis out of hundreds of posts. The Red Cross response to the hostages and the Gaza war closely parallels the organization's inaction and excuses during the Holocaust. Like the victims languishing in the Nazis' concentration camps, the Israeli hostages languishing in Gaza became non-persons - neither seen nor heard in the ICRC's actions and public campaigns. Regarding Israelis, the ICRC's policy of neutrality is a one-way street. The ICRC has repeatedly and vocally joined the intense political campaigns led by UN agencies and allied NGOs which portray Israel's counterterrorism in Gaza as egregious violations of international law. Its posts on Instagram include dozens of condemnations of "the limitless destruction of Gaza" and of the IDF's "evacuation orders" to safe havens outside the areas of combat. The ICRC repeatedly condemned Israeli military actions involving hospitals and clinics in Gaza, but said nothing about the extensive exploitation of these facilities by Hamas. ICRC personnel on the ground in Gaza were aware of the thousands of rockets used to strike Israeli population centers. Each of these attacks on Israel was a war crime. But the Red Cross reported nothing. The writer is founder and president of NGO Monitor and professor emeritus of political studies at Bar-Ilan University.
2025-01-30 00:00:00
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