Prince William and the Red Cross
The humanitarian body poses as the disinterested champion of the suffering. It is not
A further point on the deeply ill-advised remarks by the Prince of Wales about the war in Gaza, about which I wrote here yesterday, is that they were published as he made a well-publicised visit to the Red Cross in London and took part in a video link with Red Cross staff working in Gaza. The BBC reported:
The prince heard warnings from senior crisis manager, Pascal Hundt, that without medical supplies or fuel, hospitals risked “becoming a cemetery” and that distributing humanitarian aid had become difficult because of looting by “hungry mobs”. Prince William was also told that the Red Cross was ready to help with the release of hostages.
As a result, the prince declared that he was “deeply moved as a father”.
Prince William assumes that the Red Cross is a disinterested champion of the suffering. It is not. Over the years, it has served as a mouthpiece for unfounded and malicious Palestinian accusations against Israel. Ever since the October 7 pogrom, it has been deeply compromised as a Hamas patsy and a partisan for the Palestinian cause.
Despite many pleas, it has failed to visit the Israeli hostages. It has failed to transfer to the hostages the medication that some of them urgently need, despite the promise of such a transfer being in the terms of the last ceasefire.
It has also failed to report the fact that, as the Israel Defence Forces have testified, every medical facility in Gaza has been used for Hamas terrorist activities. In such medical facilities, terrorists have posed as doctors and nurses. A huge tunnel complex had been dug under al Shifa hospital whose director, another doctor and two nurses were arrested by the IDF following evidence of “extensive Hamas terrorist activity” at the hospital. A few days ago, the IDF arrested around one hundred terrorists in the Nasser hospital.
It defies belief that the Red Cross, UN and other humanitarian organisations were unaware of this extensive abuse by Hamas of Gaza’s medical facilities. Yet none of them, including the Red Cross, said anything.
On Gatestone, Robert Williams has written about the Red Cross:
The organisation boasts:
“The ICRC’s actions are aimed at protecting the lives, health and dignity of people affected by violence. In doing so, the ICRC takes a holistic, integrated approach in which three distinct areas of action — protection, assistance and prevention — are closely interlinked. Work done in any one of these areas informs, reinforces and complements actions taken in the others.”
So far, the ICRC has done absolutely nothing to “protect” the lives of the hostages in Gaza, has not “assisted” them, or done anything to “prevent” the ongoing physical and psychological abuse of the hostages, including rape and torture. The ICRC has done nothing, even if such attempts at prevention had meant only the most basic task of obtaining access to the hostages and ensuring that any signs of abuse would be made public for the world to react to, or even just making public statements directed at Hamas to the effect that they must not harm the hostages. The ICRC has uttered no such thing.
The only time they have shown themselves on the scene was in operating what has been dubbed as the ICRC’s “Uber” service: passing the little more than 100 freed hostages from Hamas vehicles into the ICRC’s SUVs.
There’s worse.
Last December, Israeli media reported that families of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas were actually reprimanded by Red Cross representatives. Doron, the daughter of Roni and Simona Steinbrecher, was kidnapped by Hamas from Kfar Aza on October 7. When the parents were invited to a meeting with the Red Cross, they thought that it was finally prepared to transfer to Doron the daily medication she needed. Instead they were told:
Think about the Palestinian side. It’s hard for the Palestinians, they’re being bombed.
Last November, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice said that following the October 7 pogrom Red Cross social media posts provided extensive claims about Gaza casualties but failed to note the harm done to Israelis in the onslaught — including a failure to address the rape and sexual violence inflicted on the Israeli victims.
In a letter to Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the JIJ wrote:
A noticeable emphasis on the Gaza Strip is evident in the content shared by ICRC on its social media platforms (see Annex 1). This is evident in depictions of scenes from Gaza, casualty statistics, and information about victims within Gaza. However, a significant absence exists concerning content depicting the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 and the impact on communities in Israel near the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, a notable gap in communication on ICRC’s Instagram account was observed following the October 7 attack.
While references were made to hostage-taking and the importance of adhering to international humanitarian law, a more robust stance against the violations of international humanitarian law committed by Hamas on October 7, including acts of sexual violence and genocide, was expected.
Equally concerning is the absence of any posts, whether images, graphics, or videos, addressing the damages suffered on Israeli soil. This encompasses distressing scenes of houses reduced to rubble, charred walls, mass destruction, and the devastating harms caused by rocket hits on civilian infrastructure in Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, and other locations.
The consequences of this content disproportion are significant, as it affects the overall narrative, public perception, and understanding of the conflict.
This disproportionate attention mattered because of the significant impact made by Red Cross posts on social media where antisemitism has been roaring out of control. The JIJ letter observed:
From October 7 until October 25, there has been a 500 per cent increase in the volume of antisemitic events compared to the same period last year. Specifically in social networks, the increase of online antisemitic discourse was, between October 7-23, 400 per cent compared to the 17 days prior to the war and 340 per cent compared to the same dates in the previous months.
The Red Cross has a long history of hostility to Israel. Williams writes on Gatestone:
During the Holocaust, the ICRC did nothing to help any of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and instead wrote a “favourable report of the good treatment of Jews in German camps”.
For fifty years, the Red Cross refused to admit under its umbrella Israel’s emergency medical and humanitarian service, Magen David Adom, even though this met all the Red Cross criteria. The ostensible objection was that the Israeli organisation refused to include the cross in its own symbol. Yet the Red Cross had admitted the Red Crescent, Red Lion and Red Sun organisations, none of which did so.
In 2006, the issue was finally resolved by a compromise involving the use of another emblem, a “red crystal” that could stand alone or frame the Israel’s six-pointed star — and the inclusion of the “Palestine Red Crescent,” for which an exception was made to the Red Cross rule that affiliates have to be under a sovereign state.
The fact that this issue was settled doesn’t remove the very bad taste it leaves in the mouth.
None of these disturbing features of Prince William’s remarks has been brought up by Britain’s Jewish community. Instead, its leaders have fulsomely praised his comments.
Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, said that since visiting the Middle East in 2018 Prince William had shown “deep concern” for the well-being of all those affected by the conflict. The Jewish Board of Deputies gushed:
The heartfelt words of the Prince of Wales express a clear understanding of the tragic nature of the current conflict.
“A clear understanding”? Jewish leaders should have said that Prince William’s remarks were deeply unfortunate and troubling; that they added to the clamour for Israel to lose the war against Hamas; and that they also poured fuel onto the flames of Israel-demonisation, caused by the false and defamatory implication that Israel is killing more civilians than is required for its defence.
The fact that they said none of this is deeply depressing but not in the least surprising.
Britain’s Jewish leaders are generally craven and fawning in their dealings with government and the Royal Family. Terrified of provoking yet more antisemitism, they keep their heads firmly below all available parapets. Rarely do they say what so desperately needs to be said. Rarely if ever do they bring to public attention the two principal issues driving the current tsunami of antisemitism: the theologically based, exterminatory hatred of Jews and the State of Israel in the Islamic world, including within Britain’s Muslim community; and its political expression in the Palestinian agenda that is now the cause of causes for the “progressive” west.
The Prince of Wales is soon to visit a synagogue to listen to young Jews speak about their experiences of antisemitism since October 7.
By all accounts, he is genuinely concerned about this rise in Jew-hatred. If he wants to do something useful about it, he should be calling out the factors that are driving it: the defamatory lies, distortions and selective reporting in the media coverage of the the Gaza war, some of which amounts to incitement to hatred of Israel; the Nazi-style, hallucinatory antisemitism that pours out of the Palestinian Authority and infuses the Palestinian agenda to exterminate Israel, an agenda which is effectively endorsed by all who support the Palestinian cause; and the way in which “humanitarian” bodies like the Red Cross are disseminating incitement against Israel and the Jewish people on social media — and poisoning the minds of well-meaning but ignorant and credulous individuals.
Somehow I doubt he’ll say any of that.
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Monstrous complicity
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