The Red Cross and the red heads

Three more Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for 491 days were released last week. The three men returned home emaciated, gaunt, and with signs of suffering from severe malnourishment including complex cardiac issues and infections. Seeing them paraded by Hamas in a dehumanizing public spectacle before thousands of armed terrorists and jeering “innocent civilians,” it was impossible to avoid the analogy that they looked like people who had survived Nazi concentration camps 80 years ago. In addition to deliberate starvation, there are multiple reports of the hostages’ physical and psychological torture, and sexual abuse. The massacre on October 7, 2023, that’s correctly noted as the largest slaughter of Jews on any one day since the Holocaust, has now seen men and women returning, surviving unspeakable horrors, and looking the same as the victims from 1945. 

Waiting in the wings as a spectator, the International Red Cross (ICRC) has properly faced widespread criticism and public ridicule. The ICRC has stood by for nearly 500 days, never once visiting or checking on the status of any one of the 251 hostages kidnapped 16 months ago, never once delivering medical supplies, telling family members of the hostages that they should be concerned for the Gazans, and enabling and participating in Hamas’ war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

One could be forgiven for thinking that the ICRC was contending to win “Best Supporting Actor in a Real-Life Horror Movie.” 

Nowhere are the Red Cross’ failures and abandonment of the hostages more vivid than regarding the most vulnerable among them including dozens of women and children, and even elderly Holocaust survivors. And nowhere among the most vulnerable is this more evident than the Bibas family whose father, Yarden, was released a week ago after an unbearable 16 months, Yarden’s wife, Shiri, and two beautiful red-headed sons, Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months) were kidnapped and have not been heard from since. The terrorists not only kidnapped the entire Bibas family, but made sure to film the terror in Shiri’s eyes, and Ariel screaming in fear, from multiple angles. Surely, the Red Cross would and should have advocated for the release of the Bibas family long ago, and insisted on visiting the little boys to check on their wellbeing. But nothing. Simply, the Red Cross abandoned the red heads. 

“Come now, Jonathan. Surely you must be exaggerating,” you might think. But no, the facts are incontrovertible. In fact, it gets worse. Just look at the spectacle in which the Red Cross has become party to. Upon the release of the hostages Red Cross representatives have willingly participated in a grotesque public signing of a Hamas “certificate of release.” Did nobody in the Red Cross, anywhere in the world, say, “No, we will not participate in your continued dehumanization of the hostages.” 

In every case of the hostages being released, how is it that the Red Cross has allowed armed Hamas terrorists to surround and climb on top of the vehicles carrying the hostages to freedom, threatening and tormenting their victims even once they are out of Hamas clutches? 

Why does the Red Cross transport the hostages in vehicles with clear glass windows, a vile invasion of privacy of people who have endured so much suffering, and providing no security for the released hostages from the blood thirsty mobs for whom one extra, “Allah Akbar” could trigger a deadly lynch.  

Essentially, the Red Cross has been party to 251 war crimes, from day one, every day. In the first 50 days alone, that’s 12,500 war crimes. For the remaining 76 hostages, that’s nearly 38,000 cumulative days of war crimes to which the Red Cross has been complicit and has done nothing. 

As Rolene Marks, an international journalist and media specialist noted, “The Red Cross is complicit in crimes against humanity, including starvation and torture of hostages. They have failed their mandate, not provided medicine, not demanded welfare checks, or done anything to rase awareness of or advocate for the hostages. They failed the Jewish people during the Holocaust and have failed the Jewish people today.”

Indeed, comparisons to the Holocaust are not just because of the visual signs of starvation of the survivors. Hiding behind a mask of “neutrality” the Red Cross continues to carry the shame of its complacency with the Nazi’s murder of six million Jews. During the Holocaust, as it maintained a relationship with the Third Reich, the ICRC failed to denounce Nazi atrocities, and even provided an immoral cover up for them. 

Throughout Nazi Europe, the ICRC only visited a few concentration camps under heavily controlled conditions. The most infamous visit occurred in June 1944 at Theresienstadt, staged by the Nazis to deceive the international community. As a result, the Red Cross issued a misleadingly and deceitful positive report that contributed to inaction, and the slaughter of millions more.

By 1942, detailed reports about the mass extermination of Jews had reached the ICRC. A key moment came in 1944 when two Slovak Jewish escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, provided a comprehensive report on the camps function as a death factory. Despite this evidence, the ICRC largely remained silent.

After the war, the ICRC was primarily focused on helping prisoners of war, but not Jews and other Holocaust victims who were classified as civilians, claiming they were outside its mandate. Only In 1995, ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga issued an apology, admitting the organization’s moral failure in not speaking out more forcefully. 

Based on this, and the inaction vis a vis the hostages, it seems the ICRC never truly learned from their mistakes, either due to lack of caring, or a deep seeded bias against Jewish victims. 

In addition to justified widespread criticism of the ICRC, it has become subject of widespread ridicule. The best of these was a recent parody comparing the Red Cross to a rideshare app. 

Today, Yarden Bibas faces the grim reality that his wife and sons may have been murdered. But of course, we don’t know because Hamas has never been forced to provide a list of the hostages and their status, and the Red Cross abandoned its responsibility to ensure that at least this would happen. 

Hillel Fuld, a global speaker, tech columnist, and startup marketing advisor commented, “The Red Cross has stayed loyal to its historic moral bankruptcy. It should come as a surprise to no one that they completely failed to do their job as it pertains to the hostages. Somehow anyone with a moral compass hopes deep down that this time would be different, but it never is. Maybe Trump will do something about it like he’s done to so many deeply immoral organizations worldwide.” Fuld’s brother, Ari, was stabbed to death in a 2018 terror attack, by a terrorist who was recently released. 

With growing signs that the remaining hostages who might be alive are in desperately worse condition, but without clear knowledge of who is suffering the most, who is alive, who Hamas might execute rather than returning live human beings because they may have played their hand, the Red Cross should be advocating and demanding answers. Rather, their costumes are waiting for the next hostage release so they can pose for pictures alongside the masked and armed Hamas terrorists. 

Rather than insisting on the release of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, unconditionally, they are serving as props to the Hamas real life horror movie. 

Some in Israel have called upon the ICRC not only to be held accountable and castigated for their careless, inept collaboration with Hamas, but to be defunded and shut down. This should expand to other national Red Cross societies, including the American Red Cross, which by their own inaction and lack of bold steps on their own, are also complacent in allowing the parent organization not to fulfill its own mandate. 

Due to ICRC and other international inaction, the Genesis 123 Foundation has launched a global petition to pressure Hamas to release all the remaining hostages unconditionally.