Hamas and the Red Cross

On 19 January 2025, following the conclusion of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hamas, three Israeli women were released after 471 days of captivity in Gaza. The hostages were transferred to Red Cross vehicles, where they were harassed and taunted by armed “militants” and a menacing crowd that pressed itself against the windows and chanted “Allahu Akbar!” Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did nothing to interfere with this intimidating display of indignity and public humiliation. Instead, uniformed ICRC officials complied when Hamas fighters handed them “certificates of completion to sign.” The three young women were then forced to hold these documents while their pictures were taken, as if they had come to Gaza for university courses.

This grotesque spectacle highlighted the degree to which the ICRC has been willing to serve as a prop for Hamas, before and after the Palestinian jihadists perpetrated the atrocities of 7 October 2023. More than 250 captives were seized from Israel on that terrible day. Most of them were alive, some were already dead, and a still-unknown number have since died in captivity or been murdered by their abductors. Not one of the Israeli abductees received a visit from the organisation ostensibly responsible for implementing the requirements of the Geneva Convention. The Red Cross did not provide a shred of information to the tormented families regarding the condition of the captives because, as its own official statements blandly insist, without the agreement of the Hamas, “the ICRC cannot act.”

Justifications like these are technically correct, but they sidestep the main issues raised by the ICRC’s critics. The anger expressed by Israelis and others is not caused by the ICRC’s failure to somehow force Hamas to allow visits and provide medications. The problem is that the organisation was largely passive and failed to use its vast prestige to demand access to the hostages or campaign for their release. The Red Cross officials who travelled throughout the region, including Qatar, did not hold press conferences where this message would have been amplified. Nor did they publish public letters addressed to, say, the heads of the Qatari government demanding assistance in pressing Hamas to follow basic humanitarian and legal principles on the treatment of its “prisoners.”

When they appeared on major media platforms, the ICRC’s officials did not bang on the tables or make any demands of Hamas at all. As Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy in Washington, DC has pointed out, “Many members of the International Committee of the Red Cross—who visited Gaza, held press conferences and left without bringing holy hell down on Hamas, kicking and screaming and demanding that they see the hostages—have blood on their hands.” Instead, the ICRC officials meekly and repeatedly offered the excuse that kicking, screaming, and banging on tables was simply not possible.

Similarly, on social-media platforms, the references to the hostages were few and far between. In 2024, the ICRC in Israel & OT account on X sent only seven tweets that mentioned the Israelis out of hundreds of posts. The main @ICRC account, which has a massive following of 2.2 million, is able to point to a few more examples, but most of these repeated the organisation’s excuse that its hands were tied by the ostensible limitations of its role as “a neutral intermediary.”

This narrowly legalistic policy recalls the ICRC’s shameful inaction during the Nazi Holocaust, when its officials ignored internal and external evidence of the German death camps and the genocidal “Final Solution.” The Red Cross leaders deliberated and decided to avoid public condemnations that would create friction between the Nazi authorities and Swiss officials.

That policy was not merely passive—the ICRC was also a willing participant in Nazi propaganda exercises. Specifically, the organisation presented the Theresienstadt ghetto as a “model” for the ICRC, which led it to circulate a fake report stipulating that Jews were not being transferred to the gas chambers. It took sixty years, immense pressure, and the emergence of documents revealing the organisation’s moral duplicity before the Red Cross acknowledged that Auschwitz “represents the greatest failure in the history of the ICRC, aggravated by its lack of decisiveness in taking steps to aid the victims of Nazi persecution. This failure will remain part of the ICRC’s memory.” Their statement concluded:

For the ICRC the most appropriate way to honour the victims and survivors … is to fight for a world in which the human dignity of every man, woman and child is respected without any reservations. It may never be possible to fully achieve this aim but the memory of Auschwitz obliges us to do everything in our power to work towards it.

These noble words notwithstanding, the Red Cross response to the hostages and the Gaza war closely parallels the organisation’s inaction and excuses during the Shoah. 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.

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The ICRC’s own double standards are particularly galling. Regarding Israelis, the 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 like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), which portray Israel’s counterterrorism in Gaza as egregious violations of international law. The organisation’s “Israel and Gaza” 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, which the ICRC insists “are not compatible” with international humanitarian law (IHL). But IHL, including the numerous “Geneva conventions,” is a flexible and endlessly contested concept that often reflects political and ideological preferences. In some interpretations, the Israeli policies in Gaza are entirely consistent with and perhaps above and beyond the requirements of the law of armed conflict. But these interpretations were entirely absent in the ICRC’s declarations, media interviews, and posts.

During the Gaza conflict, 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. For years, ICRC personnel on the ground in Gaza have included permanent staff, while top officials have made frequent visits. Like their UN and NGO counterparts and everyone else in Gaza, they were all aware of the vast tunnel network built by Hamas below schools, hospitals, clinics, mosques, residences, and parks. These tunnels were essential to Hamas’s terror strategy, including for the production and storage of thousands of rockets used to strike Israeli population centres. Each of these attacks on Israel was a war crime, but the Red Cross reported nothing, unlike the journalists and doctors who observed and documented the presence of Hamas weapons and fighters and the systematic exploitation of hospitals and other medical facilities for war and terrorism.

No Accountability or Oversight

Like UN agencies such as the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and powerful NGOs such as Amnesty International and HRW, the ICRC enjoys a privileged status and moral reputation (known as the “halo effect”) based on a heroic backstory, a noble mission statement, and a skilled public-relations staff. The Red Cross headquarters in Geneva is located near the WHO building and opposite the old League of Nations compound, which now houses agencies such as the UN Human Rights Council.

An NGO’s institutional structure and internal processes are central to explaining its political agenda and biases, as reflected in its policies regarding Israel and the conflict. The ICRC is a private Swiss entity that operates according to an agreement with the Swiss government, which also includes legal immunity for the organisation’s staff, as well as exemptions and other privileges comparable to those enjoyed by the embassies of sovereign countries. The top officials—primarily the president and director general—are responsible for operations, including staffing and policy, and they are selected by the ICRC Assembly, which is composed of 25 Swiss citizens, who, according to the regulations, must be French speakers. The Assembly, which also selects the five-member executive (the Council), is the governing body and responsible for oversight, including of financial issues. 

Reflecting this structure, the ICRC is heavily influenced by Swiss government policies. The failure of the Red Cross to act during the Holocaust paralleled Switzerland’s ostensibly neutral policy of not angering the German Nazi regime. The ICRC’s decision-making processes are closed and generally lack transparency, which, in turn, prevents systematic accountability and independent analysis. For the most part, the major Swiss media platforms serve as echo chambers in support of the ICRC’s leadership, compounding the lack of accountability. 

The actions and inactions of the Red Cross—particularly its false “impartiality” following the 7 October attacks and throughout the subsequent conflict—are also attributable to or reinforced by the influence of the Swiss foreign ministry and other elite actors. Switzerland’s systematic criticisms of Israel and more general support for the Palestinian cause are therefore reflected in the ICRC, including its departure from European policy by maintaining a “dialogue” with Hamas. Employees who deal with these issues are likely to have views and prejudices that closely resemble those of the Swiss government.

The ICRC’s current director general is Pierre Krähenbühl, a prominent Swiss political figure who held a high-level position in the organisation from 1991 to 2014. He was then appointed head of UNRWA, an agency notorious for its close involvement with Hamas and support of the Palestinian victimhood narrative. In 2019, following numerous reports of mismanagement and corruption and an official investigation, Krähenbühl resigned from UNRWA. According to media publications, a secret UN report into his conduct concluded that he had presided over “a work culture characterized by low morale, fear of retaliation … distrust, secrecy, bullying, intimidation, and marginalisation … and management that is highly dysfunctional.” Claims in the Swiss media that the investigation had exonerated Krähenbühl were refuted by a number of sources, including Lex Takkenberg, the former head of UNRWA’s Ethics Office, whose report led to Krähenbühl’s removal.

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Nevertheless, in 2023, the Swiss government used its control of the Assembly to install Krähenbühl as head of the ICRC. The Swiss made this appointment with the support of the media echo chamber. As with other decisions, the process by which he was selected was entirely opaque. His appointment attracted some criticism, but not enough to force the ICRC Assembly and its Swiss backers to reconsider. In this role, Krähenbühl has actively reinforced the political advocacy targeting Israel and promoting the Palestinian cause under the facade of neutrality. (The ICRC claims to select “visionary and innovative leaders who embody their values and can work collaboratively to achieve better humanitarian outcomes.”) 

More broadly, the ability of the ICRC to avoid independent investigations or consequences for its actions is a direct result of its closed structure, its immunity from independent investigation, and the powerful influence of its public-relations staff.

Prying Open the ICRC’s Protective Shell

Criticism of the ICRC’s moral failure to campaign on behalf of the Israeli hostages in Gaza during their fifteen months of torture and captivity—specifically, the direct role that the international humanitarian organisation played in their humiliation and degradation—is not likely to force its officials and Swiss sponsors to agree to provide accountability or cooperate with an independent investigation.

Given its closed and tightly controlled structure, and the protection it enjoys from its self-declared “neutrality, impartiality and independence,” significant changes in ICRC leadership and policies will require a major externally-led effort. The options are limited, but the most effective and realistic measure would be significant cuts to its funding from top government donors linked to demands for reform, including full transparency in decision-making, and the establishment of independent oversight and accountability frameworks. The top donors, in order of funding amounts, include the US, Germany, Switzerland (which is unlikely to leverage its contribution), the UK, the EU, Sweden, and Canada. 

Elliott Abrams, former senior director of the US National Security Council and Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, has suggested that the US withhold its funding (US$622 million), which amounts to approximately a quarter of the ICRC’s total budget of US$2.8 billion. If the US were to take the lead, some other major donor governments might follow, depending on political alignments.

But for now and the foreseeable future, the ICRC is the object of intense Israeli anger for the moral blindness its officials display in their cooperation with Hamas terrorists. This anger will stain future relations with the ICRC, including potential restrictions on officials seeking entry into Israel. This will no doubt elicit further condemnations from the usual precincts of anti-Israeli opinion, but the ICRC’s actions have left Israel with no choice. The ICRC’s carefully curated illusion of “neutrality, impartiality and independence” has now disappeared and been replaced by a reputation for blatant hypocrisy that Israel can no longer afford to tolerate.