A Tenacious ‘Magen David Adom’ versus ICRC

Why Israel’s mistrust of the Red Cross runs deep – and why history still haunts humanitarianism.

Since Israel’s rebirth in 1948, its national emergency service equivalent of the red Cross, Magen David Adom (MDA), has lived in uneasy tension with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — the very organisation charged with upholding the universal ideals of compassion, neutrality, and humanity.

Those tensions are once again raw in the midst of the Gaza war/truce and the slow ending of the hostage crisis and the handover of the remaining dead hostages. For many Israelis, the ICRC’s long, seemingly condemnatory silence, its hesitations, and its moral equivocations have reopened a festering wound that has never truly healed.

This is not merely a pedantic, bureaucratic disagreement. It is a story of othering, exclusion, heartless betrayal, and the enduring struggle to reconcile high principles with secular-sectarian prejudice.

The Star That Wasn’t Welcome

For more than half a century, Magen David Adom had met every criterion for membership in the international Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its ambulances, medics, and disaster responders operated to the highest standards. Yet its admission was blocked year after year — officially because of its emblem, the Red Star of David.

While the Red Crescent societies of Muslim nations were welcomed as early as 1912, the Jewish state’s symbol was judged too “political,” too “religious.” Behind the diplomatic language of neutrality lay the unmistakable scent of bias. The only country that early approved the MDA’s quest was the American Red Cross.

It took until 2006 — and the patient diplomacy of a courageous Arab humanitarian, Dr. Mohammed al-Hadid of the Jordanian Red Crescent, to change the negative narrative. The decision to admit Israel together with the Palestinian Red Crescent was finally announced in 2006, at the 29th International Conference of the Red Cross & Red Crescent, in Geneva, Switzerland. That year, the Red Crystal was introduced as a neutral emblem, finally allowing both the Israeli MDA and the Palestinian Red Crescent to be recognised.

It was a victory long delayed, and it left scars that time has not yet erased. To many Israelis, the episode proved that universality was conditional — that even in the realm of humanitarianism, Jewish suffering was treated as exceptional, and therefore negotiable.

Haunted by the Silence of the Past

The distrust runs deeper than modern Middle East politics. It reaches back to the haunting memories of the Holocaust.

As historian Gerald Steinacher documents in Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust, the ICRC failed catastrophically in the 1930s and 1940s. It deferred to a “deeply Nazified” German Red Cross, refused to denounce the persecution of Jews, and stayed silent as millions were sent to their deaths.

That failure — the ICRC’s choice of bureaucratic caution over moral courage — remains one of the darkest chapters in its history. For Israelis, the echoes are impossible to ignore.

Has there been a “Hamasification” of the ICRC and the Palestinian Red Crescent? It seems like that. Abject policy failures have been allowed to occur. Moral leadership is nowhere to be seen. We know that the ICRC has done little to nothing for the long-held hostages, denying their humanitarian mandate.

When the same institution today pleaded “constraints” or “lack of access” in the face of Hamas’ hostage cruelty, it recalled an earlier significant silence in the face of unspeakable evil.

Gaza: Neutrality or Moral Paralysis?

The Gaza hostage crisis tested every humanitarian principle the ICRC claims to defend.

Families of the captives watched in anguish as Hamas staged grotesque release ceremonies — captives forced to smile and wave for propaganda cameras, “thank-you” certificates thrust into their hands, and “goodie bags” paraded before a cheering crowd.

Throughout, the ICRC had insisted that its “hands are tied.” It said that it cannot act without Hamas’ consent and that it must remain “neutral” in its public statements. Many Jews see this toxic policy as a sly, one-sided, pro-Palestinian partisanship.

Yet neutrality has become indistinguishable from paralysis. The same organisation that says nothing about Hamas’ televised humiliation of Jewish hostages finds its voice readily when criticising Israel.

A dispute with the Israel Prison Service, over photographing Palestinian prisoners during their release in 2024, epitomised the hypocrisy. The ICRC tried to block photos documenting humane treatment — even as Hamas’ propaganda videos streamed unopposed.

When Israel objected, the Red Cross backed down. But the damage was done. To many, it was a familiar pattern: firmness with Israel, indulgence with Israeli enemies.

In a side note, no huge anti-Hamas posters were backdropping the release points of freed Palestinian prisoners, no dictated forced smiles and waves for an online audience, and finally no sham “release certificate” signings.

The Moral Void

The tragedy is not only operational but spiritual. The ICRC’s founders envisioned an organisation grounded in moral clarity — one that would protect life above politics, and conscience above convenience.

But in its fear of offending, the modern Red Cross has become timid. It invokes neutrality to justify silence, balance to excuse blindness, and confidentiality to evade accountability. Its humanitarian diplomacy has become an end in itself — more concerned with preserving access than confronting injustice.

Israelis, who have endured centuries of indifference to their suffering, recognise the danger in that posture. A neutrality that refuses to name evil becomes its accomplice. As the left love to chant at anti-Israel marches: “silence is violence’.

Holding Up Moses’ Hands

Israel, a small and battered democracy though it is, stands at the moral crossroads of our age. The world demands of it impossible perfection — restraint under rocket fire, compassion under terror, and humility while mourning its children. Meanwhile, liberal sermonising from the West and fundamentalist fury from parts of the Arab world unite in a common tone of condemnation.

In such an hour, Israelis draw strength from an ancient image. When Moses’ arms grew heavy during battle, Aaron and Hur held them aloft so that Israel would prevail over Amalek (Exodus 17:11–13). The story reminds us that moral endurance is not a solitary act. It is sustained by those Jews and Gentiles who refuse to let righteousness collapse under exhaustion.

“Against the World”

In the fourth century, the Alexandrian theologian Athanasius faced a hostile empire and stood his ground. “If the world is against the truth,” he said, “then I am against the world.”

Israel knows that creed by heart. It has lived it through exile, war, and vilification. And it lives it again today — facing a world quick to doubt its pain and eager to lecture its conscience.

The ICRC and the global community it represents must look again into the mirror of history. Neutrality without moral courage is not virtue; it is abdication.

To be truly humanitarian is to stand for the sanctity of life — not to balance good and evil on the blind scales of abstract diplomacy, but to name them for what they are.

Until that truth is remembered, Israel will stand alone, holding fast to life, to justice, and to the stubborn faith that truth, though outnumbered, never surrenders.

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MDA UK welcomes H.E. Dr Mohammed Al-Hadid

https://mdauk.org/mda-uk-welcomes-h-e-dr-mohammed-al-hadid/

“Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust” by Gerald Steinacher https://www.amazon.com/Humanitarians-War-Cross-Shadow-Holocaust/dp/0198704933

How Did Nazis Escape After the War? | Gerald Steinacher(2.40 minutes in for ICRC references) https://youtu.be/i_GcT4En78U?si=dTRAkl5gbcFD_P-Y