Aish The Red cross failing Israel

https://aish.com/how-the-red-cross-is-failing-israel-and-the-jews/?src=ac
How the Red Cross Is Failing Israel and the Jews
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 17, 2023
11 min read

Demand the humanitarian organization to do its job.

In the depths of World War II, as war engulfed Europe, the International Red Cross (IRC) came to the aid of millions of prisoners held by Germany. The Red Cross helped millions of Allied soldiers languishing in German POW camps - but pointedly refused to press Nazi Germany on access to the concentration camps where millions of Jews were imprisoned and murdered. Today, the Red Cross - officially named “The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement” - is in danger of repeating its mistakes of World War II, as it fails to press for aid to Israeli hostages in Gaza, allows Hamas to shelter in its ambulances and hospitals, and wastes its moral authority by issuing one-sided condemnations that hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas’ army.

Red Cross’ Mission and Makeup
The mission of the Red Cross is “to bring assistance without discrimination to the wounded on the battlefield…to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found.” It declares itself impartial, neutral, universal and independent.

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The organization was founded as a committee of various affiliated medical organizations in Paris in 1919, and has included Christian (Red Cross) and Islamic (Red Crescent) medical organizations for over a century. (The group grew out of the American-founded Red Cross, which dated to 1881.) For over 60 years following Israel’s founding, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement forbade Israel’s Magen David Adom (Red Magen David) organization from formally joining the group. Their opposition was so forceful that in 2001, the director of the American Red Cross, Dr. Bernadine Healy, was forced out of her position after she championed Israel’s membership. “I’d say the Red Cross isn’t a healthy culture,” she said at the time. Magen David Adom finally was allowed to join in 2006, so long as the Palestine Red Crescent Society joined as well as a counterweight.

Palestine Red Crescent Society
Many casual observers around the world assume that the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, is somehow apolitical and staffed by foreign, neutral professionals. In fact, it relies on local affiliated organizations to provide service on the ground in conflict zones. In some of the Middle East, that means the de facto Red Cross presence is the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

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Founded in 1968 by Yasser Arafat’s brother Fathi Arafat, the Palestine Red Crescent Society declares that it “operates in Palestine and the diaspora.” It operates throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Although, as a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Palestine Red Crescent Society is duty-bound to help all people within its area of operations, the group has for years refused to give life-saving treatment to Jews who’ve been shot or otherwise injured in terrorist attacks in the West Bank. The group is headed by Mr. Marwan Jilani, the PLO’s former Deputy Permanent Observer to the United Nations and a former minister in the Palestinian Authority.

Operating Alongside Hamas

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society is undeniably offering lifesaving aid in Gaza. At times, Hamas has been critical of the organization, accusing it of colluding with Israel in helping to evacuate Palestinian civilians out of the north of Gaza during fierce fighting between Israeli and Hamas forces in Gaza City, when Hamas strenuously tried to get civilians to remain in the battle zone.

Yet the Palestinian Red Crescent Society works alongside Hamas, possibly out of necessity given the iron fist with which Hamas rules the entirety of Gaza. Captured Hamas fighters have described over and over again how Hamas soldiers operate out of Gaza’s hospitals, use Gaza’s ambulances to transport fighters and weapons, and use patients and civilians who seek shelter in hospitals as human shields.

Take Al-Shifa Hospital, which Hamas fighters used as a base as they battled Israeli forces in the first half of November. Prior to the current war, the Palestine Red Crescent Society openly worked “in partnership” with Hamas to upgrade Al Shifa Hospital. It was surely no secret to administrators inside the hospital that Hamas used Al-Shifa as a headquarters, yet throughout the long battles in and around the hospital in November, Red Cross and Red Crescent spokespeople condemned Israel’s actions over and over again - and never Hamas’, remaining silent about the open secret of Hamas’ control of the hospital. Red Crescent personnel brought medical supplies to the hospital and evacuated patients from the hospital throughout battles there, likely coordinating their activities with the hospital’s Hamas controllers. Robert Mardini, the Lebanese-born engineer who serves as Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanded that Israel stop its military operations at the hospital immediately, using the authority of his position to condemn Israeli actions as heartless - though never said a word about Hamas’s use of the hospital.

Once Israeli forces succeeded in entering the hospital, it became clear that contrary to Red Cross claims, Al-Shifa had indeed been a military site. Israeli fighters found caches of weapons and tunnels used by Hamas fighters, video footage of Israeli hostages being brought into the hospital, and the body of Yehudit Weiss, a 66-year-old woman kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. A Hamas fighter captured in the hospital confirmed its use as a military base: “doctors were furious because Hamas operatives and operatives of other terror groups were inside the hospital…dressed as nursing staff and other medical staff ‘to blend in with the hospital wards.’” He estimated that about 100 Hamas fighters operated openly in Al-Shifa, especially in the Intensive Care Unit.

Another Hamas employee who’d sheltered at the hospital with his family, Hamuda Riad Asad Shalamah, said he moved his family to the hospital because he considered it “safe and secure” because of the Red Crescent’s presence there. Yet once in the hospital, he realized it operated as a weapons depot for Hamas. “What I saw was how they wrapped the rockets with mattresses and hid them…and also guns.” Hamas showed no concern for the wellbeing of the civilians inside the hospital, he said: if “one of their rockets would explode, it could kill 50 of us, or more.”

Yet the Red Cross has dismissed these claims, as has the Palestinian Red Crescent Society as lies. They have never offered proof that their workers were not present during Hamas’s sustained and extensive activities in medical centers and ambulances in Gaza.

Disproportionate Focus on Israel
Since the current war began, the Red Cross has provided some real aid and medical help on the ground in Gaza - and also issued lots of statements and sound bites as its leadership take to the airwaves around the world, granting non-stop interviews and issuing statement after statement about the war. Perhaps unsurprisingly given its history, the vast majority of these statements are highly critical of Israel, while it’s vanishingly rare for the Red Cross to criticize Hamas.

Between October 8 and December 11, 2023, 77% of Red Cross tweets were criticizing