Facing flak, Red Cross defends its role in Israel-Hamas war

The Red Cross, accused of not doing enough to help hostages in Gaza, as well as Palestinian prisoners in Israel, has defended itself in a rare statement outlining the limits of its role.

Insisting on its neutrality, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the escalation of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories has triggered “a proliferation of dehumanizing language and of false and misleading information about the ICRC and our work in the current conflict.”

The organization, dedicated to aiding victims of war, including by visiting prisoners and detainees, has faced heavy criticism in Israel since October 7, 2023, for its failure to secure any meaningful aid for the 251 hostages taken by terrorists that day — whether by monitoring their conditions or providing them with basic humanitarian assistance, including medicine.

For its limited role in facilitating the transfer of freed hostages from Hamas to Israeli forces — both during the November 2023 ceasefire and the current one — many Israelis have come to derisively refer to the ICRC as little more than a glorified taxi service.

Meanwhile, in response to Hamas’s refusal to allow ICRC visits to its hostages, Israel has blocked the agency’s visits to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, leading to criticism on that front as well.

In recent days the ICRC faced fresh Israeli anger as Thursday’s hostage transfer in Khan Younis descended into chaos, with masked terror operatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad struggling to hold back a surging crowd and Red Cross workers seeming powerless to protect the frightened hostages.

ICRC officials “did nothing to interfere with this intimidating display of indignity and public humiliation,” Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli organization NGO Monitor, wrote in the Australian-based online magazine Quillette.

The ICRC said: “Ensuring the safety and security of the handover operations is the responsibility of the parties to the agreement.”

Furthermore, “interfering with armed security personnel could compromise the safety of ICRC staff, and more importantly that of the hostages.”

The Geneva-based organization also said it had not given permission for “people carrying Hamas flags to get on top of our buses in Ramallah” during the release of Palestinian detainees, “nor did we have the capacity to prevent people from doing so.”

In late 2023, Israel’s then-foreign minister Eli Cohen said the Red Cross had “no right to exist” if it did not visit the hostages in Gaza.

However, the organization insists it is reliant on the goodwill of the belligerents.

“From day one, we have called for the immediate release of all the hostages, and for access to them,” it says.

In World War II, the ICRC visited prisoners of war but its mandate did not explicitly extend to civilians unless governments allowed it.

The ICRC acknowledges that during World War II, it “failed to speak out and more importantly act on behalf of the millions of people who suffered and perished in the death camps, especially the Jewish people targeted, persecuted and murdered under the Nazi regime.”

In its statement, the ICRC reaffirmed that it was the “greatest failure” in the organization’s history, and said it unequivocally rejects antisemitism in all its forms.

At the same time, the ICRC has been accused by pro-Palestinian activists, particularly on social media, of not putting pressure on Israel to secure visits to Palestinian detainees since October 7, 2023, and also of not doing enough to help the wounded in the Gaza Strip.

The humanitarian organization says it has been actively engaging with the Israeli authorities “to allow for the resumption of ICRC visits and family contacts for these detainees.”

As for the wounded in Gaza, the ICRC said it had received requests to evacuate hospitals in the north, but could not regularly safely access the area due to the “extremely difficult security situation — together with roads blocked and unreliable communications.”

Following the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on January 19, the ICRC, which already had 130 staff in Gaza, is deploying more personnel, including doctors.

In 1968, Leopold Boissier, a former ICRC president, noted that the criticism most frequently leveled at the organization “is the silence with which it surrounds some of its activities.”

Nearly 60 years later, the ICRC is facing similar accusations, notably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Founded in Geneva in 1863, the organization, which has more than 18,000 staff in over 90 countries, denies being “complicit” and says it establishes trust through “confidential dialogue with all parties to the conflict.”

“Our neutrality and impartiality are critical to our ability to operate in any context.”

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