The families of 24 hostages abducted by Hamas to the Gaza Strip are suing the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for failing in its duty to visit the hostages and negotiate for their release

According to the lawsuit, the ICRC only began attempting to intervene on behalf of the hostages in Gaza weeks after they were abducted and failed to act firmly to visit the hostages even after the signing of the hostage deal, which made Red Cross visits of the remaining hostages as one of its conditions.

Even after the organization intervened, they were cruel to the hostages’ families and refused requests to supply medications to the hostages.

Shurat HaDin, the Israeli NGO representing the families, accused the ICRC of
“failing to act to fulfill its mandate and moral duty to visit the kidnapped Israelis held in Gaza, assure their wellbeing and fight for their release.”

Nitsana Darshan Leitner, president of Shurat HaDin, said: “The ICRC is literally re-living its cruel mistakes from the Holocaust when it abandoned the Jewish people in its darkest time in history. We cannot accept this disregard and disrespect for human lives just because the hostages are Jewish. The ICRC is simply biased and apathetic to Israeli lives and the suffering of the families.”

“Only this week, we counted six more hostages murdered by Hamas in captivity while the ICRC ignored them. Every minute counts.”

Ronn Torossian, a spokesperson for the hostages’ families, said: “The Red Cross has simply been non-existent vis-à-vis our hostages in Gaza. The simple inability to provide medicines or any form of cooperation when it comes to time to help our hostages is unacceptable. They have simply been a taxi service for the hostages who were released.”

The ICRC, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was founded 160 years ago as a “neutral intermediary” in conflicts and to visit and assist prisoners of war. During the Holocaust, Red Cross officials maintained connections with Nazis and toured concentration camps but failed to do anything to aid Jewish victims.

The Jewish Virtual Library wrote about the ICRC’s behavior during the Holocaust: “The Red Cross knew about the Nazi atrocities as early as August 1942. In February 1945, the President of the Red Cross wrote to a U.S. official: ‘Concerning the Jewish problem in Germany we are in close and continual contact with the German authorities.’ The fact that the head of the Red Cross would use the Nazi phraseology — ‘the Jewish problem’ — may also be an indication of the organization’s attitude that Jews were more of a problem than a people who were being annihilated.”

“The Red Cross also knew about crimes against POWs but did little to publicize them. One might have thought the U.S. government would have an interest in fomenting anger toward the Germans and would have broadcast stories of mistreatment of soldiers, but officials took the opposite tack. Virtually all the information made public about POWs emphasized their welfare. For example, a December 17, 1944, Washington Post headline was reassuring: ‘Nazis Play Fair in Prison Camps, Families Told.’ This news came from the director of POW relief of the ICRC. He told the Post the Germans “have endeavored to accord the same standards of treatment to American and British prisoners that were set up in the Geneva Convention.’

“The ICRC maintained that there was no inequality of treatment of Jewish prisoners, for example, though the organization did acknowledge that Jewish POWs were sometimes segregated. The ICRC visited Stalag VII-A on January 27, 1945, for example, and reported that 110 American Jewish POWs had been segregated but said they were not otherwise mistreated. The Red Cross accepted the Nazi contention that such actions were permissible under Article 9 of the Geneva Convention, which provides that belligerents shall not house prisoners of different races or nationalities together.”

Read the full report here.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)