The Red Cross: Mission Over Moral Red Lines Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Yehuda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Identity/Crisis, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, creating better conversations about the essential issues facing Jewish life. I’m Yehuda Kurtzer. We’re recording on Monday, February 2nd, 2025.

I have to say I’m getting scared that even after the fatigue and endless tragedy of these past 16 months of war, our people has lost its appetite for the pain and sacrifice involved in making peace. I’m really worried about it. You’re watching the release of the hostages these past few weeks, which is all part of phase one of the tense, maybe tenuous ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Watching it has been agonizing for those of us seeing it happen from afar, and I truly cannot imagine what it’s like for the hostage families themselves. I found parts of it uncomfortable to watch.

I understand why the IDF and the Israeli government have cameras set up to show family reunions to the general public, but I feel like a voyeur in sharing in the intimacy of those moments. Watching some of it has been absolutely harrowing, and even enraging, like seeing swarms of Hamas fighters now out in the open in their uniforms, even though they were underground for the totality of the war, watching them surround the Red Cross vehicles and constituting this terrifying phalanx through which the hostages have to walk, seeing the charade of making the hostages smile and wave to the crowds, the gift bags that the hostages are given as they leave.

All of this is enough to make you angry, not only at Hamas. But at anyone who would constitute an enabler of Hamas, at anyone who could credibly be called a bystander, and indeed some in the Jewish community, maybe even the dominant voice in the Jewish community, have turned in these moments to place blame and direct their powerless anger at those very Red Cross vehicles and the personnel inside. I’ve watched as my social networks have erupted with rage, describing the Red Cross as essentially an Uber service, and criticizing the failure of humanitarian agencies to get access to visit the hostages.

That accusation has special saliency, seeing as so many other humanitarian organizations have clearly manifested bias against Israel in this conflict, and even in hedging about the atrocities against civilians on October 7th. In other words, the war, and now the ceasefire, are challenging the very concept of neutrality in this conflict.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately through the prism of one of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s most famous writings, in which he says, quote, “This is the decision we have to make: whether our life is to be a pursuit of pleasure or an engagement for service. The world cannot remain a vacuum. Unless we make it an altar to God, it is invaded by demons. This is no time for neutrality. We Jews cannot remain aloof or indifferent. We, too, are either ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil.”

The idea for Heschel that this is no time for neutrality, whether it was about confronting the evils of Heschel’s era, like racial injustice or the Vietnam War, or the evils of our time, that idea has had massive influence on liberal Judaism and liberal Jews in America, and I think it’s meant to convey an orientation beyond responding to one issue of moral concern or another. I think it’s a worldview that looks askance at neutrality itself. To be neutral in the presence of evil, this would argue, is to be a bystander.

So I understand the logic behind that thinking. I understand why people look at Israel and Hamas, they look at the invasion of October 7th and Israel’s response, and then they take aim at the neutral parties who are caught in the middle. I understand the larger fear that on certain moral issues there can be no middle ground. I understand it, but I confess, I also find this way of thinking about conflict to be incredibly dangerous. The minute you divide the world in two on any issue of moral importance, the less you can ever resolve conflict through compromise.

More practically, as in this case, the minute you decide that attempts at neutrality are acts of complicity. You will simply not have any agencies in the world with the credibility and the relationships to extract those hostages out of Gaza. Like it or not, this is a function that right now only the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, can actually do.

I think there’s a larger issue though here too. I fear that my Jewish community has managed to accommodate itself to the pain and trauma of sacrifice that comes with making war, especially as an existential necessity. But it refuses to accept the pain, the trauma, and the sacrifice that comes with making peace. That’s not to say that we want war and don’t want peace. Heaven forbid—I would never say such a thing. But what are we willing to endure in the process of peacemaking? What if peace requires, as it always does, some amount of awful compromising? What if peace demands that we have neutral bystanders advocating for the voiceless and serving as the go-betweens even if we are skeptical about the moral possibility of neutrality? What if the process to achieve peace makes us have to tolerate risk and even tolerate violence, even at the levels of war, to help us get towards a different future?

So yeah, I fear, watching the criticism of the peacemakers, that we simply don’t have the appetite for what it demands. I remember this from being a kid and watching the vitriol directed towards my father, who was one of the negotiators between Israelis and Palestinians, where merely the act of dignifying Palestinians as worthy of sitting at the table and raising critical questions of what Israel would have to sacrifice to bring about a final status agreement, where those basic acts were treated as disloyalty.

Jewishly, it’s very puzzling. Do we or do we not believe that all human beings are created in the image of God? Do we or do we not plead for peace in every one of our prayers? Are those commitments entirely theoretical?

I really appreciate that I’m joined here today by Noa Schreuer, a legal advisor to the ICRC and its delegation to the United Nations stationed here in New York, previously stationed in Tel Aviv, where she was when October 7th happened. Her work here in New York includes coordinating engagement with diaspora Jews. Noa previously served as a legal advisor to the Ministry of Justice in Israel on issues of international law, as well as working at the Israeli mission to the UN in Geneva. She was educated at Hebrew University and at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. And I find it courageous that she’s here today to speak to a majority American Jewish audience about the ICRC and its role in this conflict. So thanks for being here today, Noa.

Noa: Thank you, Yehuda.

Yehuda: Let’s start with neutrality. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what you can and cannot do in this conflict, what you can and cannot talk about, but using that as a larger springboard to how you view the role of a human rights organization, a humanitarian organization like the RC, and its position of neutrality, especially in light of this moral critique of whether anybody can be neutral in this conflict.

Noa: Thanks, Yehuda, first of all, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. And I think the references you made, going back to Jewish origins, really resonates, because I think in a way they reflected the nature of our mission in the ICRC. And I think it would be good to open with a remark or with a thought about neutrality, maybe a clarification for those listening.

I think for us, neutrality is by no means an objective. Neutrality is an instrument. It is not a benchmark to which we encourage or we, we champion or push parties to strive to. We use neutrality as an instrument that enables us as a neutral organization. And I’m going to talk about, give a bit of background about what this organization is and how it came to be, but neutrality allows us to be in those places, as you rightly mentioned, where no one else can, it allows us to be the go betweens, as you said, and to be at the front lines with the trust of not only the parties to the conflict, parties being governments, being armed groups, but also of the populations within which we operate.

So in that sense, I think it should be put out there and neutrality is not, especially in this age where we’re living in a highly polarized environmental sphere, especially also when we’re looking at the horrific conflict that is unfolding between Israel and Hamas. It’s not a choice of popularity. It’s not a sexy trait to have.

Yehuda: You’re also saying it’s not a moral ideal. It’s a mechanism by which to operate. Got it.

Noa: Exactly. So that’s when it comes to neutrality. And I think another thing to throw in there is the principles based on which we ensure that neutrality. We ensure that we maintain our access. And this is based largely on a 160 years of experience. The ICC was established in the eighties, so 1863 by a bunch of Swiss humanitarians that, actually the prominent one was Henry Dunant, that stumble across a situation of an armed conflict. And Henry Dunant documents in a memoir, The Memory of Solferino is the name, the horrific consequences of that conflict to actually soldiers that were taking place in that particular one in Solferino, northern Italy.

And this memoir, he actually reflects on the need to have these aid societies that will be able to, to cross the front lines while serving as a neutral intermediaries, we call it nowadays, provide aid and respite to those in need. So that’s kind of like the underlying principle, but how do we do that, is maybe I think interesting.

One principle that we adhere to very rigidly and some would say, actually within our community, maybe overly rigidly—I’ve come across this criticism a lot throughout the past 15 months—is our bilateral and confidential dialogue with parties to conflicts. And again, I reiterate that when I say parties, we consider parties, whoever has power or control over victims of armed conflicts. So for us, in a way, this also kind of takes me to the need to interact with all actors. This means that, you know, an integral part of our role would be to speak to everyone. Because at the end of the day, if the goal and, you know, the humanitarian mission is to provide aid to those most in need, then there will be no red lines in terms of who we speak to. And that’s a very pragmatic kind of principle.

So I drifted a bit away from the confidential and bilateral dialogue, but that’s another tool in which we ensure that parties can trust us. Because they know that perhaps unlike, you know, other organizations out there, you would hardly find anything written that reflects our concerns or our findings. And when I say this, I mean all around the world in the 100 countries where we operate.

So parties should know that we’re not going to speak to what we’ve seen or you know, go public about it, and that allows them to provide us that access and to trust us.

Yehuda: Okay, you raised a lot of issues that I want to dig in on, but one of them that should be implicit in what you’re saying, what I want to raise up is even the use of the term “parties” in an armed conflict means that you’re not differentiating between what we’ll call legitimate governments and terror groups, right? And that, I think, drives a lot of the suspicion about a neutral party that’s doing this dialogue in between, because the inability to differentiate between the two creates the perception that we don’t actually think that there’s any moral difference between these two.

But I guess the logic is, if you’re going to be able to talk to everybody, you have to do so in ways that convey that you’re not, I don’t know, judging them for the legitimacy of their political cause or even the legitimacy of their moral behavior.

Noa: So I would say, Yehuda, that that’s the right notion, but I would be a bit more specific on that. The language that we use publicly and internally as an organization is based plainly and again, very rigidly on the mandates that we are provided by the Geneva conventions.

So I think. This requires, you know, some context, but the ICRC is a unique organization in that it has been designated as a certain mission by a legal instrument, which is the Geneva Convention, or more broadly speaking, international humanitarian law. And the language that we follow, so when I say non-state armed groups, to the annoyance of many people, that is plainly because the legal language that we operate based on dictates this term. This is what we follow. A terror organization, by the way, just for general knowledge, is not a term that the Geneva Conventions specify. So just for kind of context and general knowledge, but yeah.

Yehuda: Right. Now, that would also indicate that because you’re using very specific terminology and in reference to the phrase you used, bilateral and confidential, you are oftentimes asked to make condemnations of the actions of parties in the conflict and the ICRC strives to never do such a thing.

Do you want to talk a little bit more about the pressure that comes to the ICRC? And the motivation to not engage in that kind of public dialogue or debate about the legitimacy or of the behavior of the parties in the conflict? Because I think in this particular case you get into this weird paradoxical place where public betrayals of human rights law—very public terror attacks on civilians—would seem to demand that organizations that are advocating for humanitarian behavior and for human rights law would, you’d be very explicit in condemning those behaviors, but there’s a dance that you have to exercise in order to be able to maintain those bilateral and confidential relationships. Can you talk a little bit about that pressure?

Noa: Yes, for sure. I think in that sense, I want to open by saying that all of our listeners have probably realized by now that I have an Israeli accent and I’m an Israeli national and a Jew. And I want to open by saying, not as a Jew and not as an Israeli nor as an ICRC employee, but as a human being, what we’ve seen, on October 7th, an unfolding sense is a complete tragedy on all human levels. And I think, I know other people may have other ideas, but I don’t think you need to be a Jew to feel the level of pain that victims of what has happened have been enduring throughout this time, be it hostages still held in Gaza, their families, the people we have lost. And I’ve lost some, some friends and people I know. And I think, I mean, you, you can’t look around and not meet people who were not impacted by this horrific attack. So I want to say this on the human level.

But at the same time, the ICRC very frankly, and very boldly took a public stance on October 7th and stated, black and white, that the taking of hostages is a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions. It later on in different instances, public instances, conveyed that message to Hamas in meetings in Qatar, in different levels. That has been, by the way, expressed also by an ICRC president on several instances in her visits to Qatar, but on other occasions as well.

So I just want to take a step back and say, there are instances where an organization such as ourselves does condemn and does talk publicly. But what I have learned the hard way, being an ICRC employee in Israel, is that when we, as an organization, communicate publicly, it oftentimes doesn’t land as widely as we would hope.

And so on different instances, I was surprised by how much indifference my community has shown to statements that were coming up out of the ICRC that I thought were very strong and very meaningful. So I just want to say that. And I think this also, to me, this is telling about the communication environment, maybe that we live in, about narratives.

I think this also corresponds a lot to how ICRC is being perceived by my community in Israel or, or by the diaspora Jewish communities being bundled into and alienated in a way as a foreign entity. So I just want to maybe start by saying we have condemned. This is not acceptable by any standard. And we continue to reiterate that in different levels and instances, privately, but also publicly.

Yehuda: Yeah. I mean, I saw a quote in a piece in the Times of Israel that came out a couple days ago from a former executive director, I think of the ICRC who said one of the biggest liabilities ICRC faces is relative public silence. So yes, you have examples of condemnation, but in the atmosphere of noise in which we live, the expectation is a kind of constant stream of narrative condemnation by Twitter.

And if you haven’t condemned the right things, this is true for the ICRC, it’s also true for like your local conservative rabbi, if their community perceives that you aren’t condemning or lifting up the right thing at the right moment, then there’s something very problematic.

And to your point about condemnation, so I saw a short Facebook video from the ICRC, which I think is part of the messaging strategy, which said, here’s the four things that we have to say about this conflict. We condemn the taking of hostages. We demand the protection of civilians who are caught in the midst of this conflict. We advocate for the provision of humanitarian aid. And the fourth is we encourage the parties to work towards an end to the conflict.

I have to say, it seems pretty basic, right? It’s not like, it’s not treasonous, it’s not crazy, but they’re, I guess I’m stuck on the, like, whether what’s going wrong is a communications challenge, whether it is ideological bias challenge, or whether it’s just even, narrower than that, which is any intimation of not just saying explicitly, “we think this side is more on the right than this side” makes it very hard for people to hear what feel to me like fundamentally simple moral messages.

Noa: I agree. I agree. These are very basic and, yeah, just humane messages that you would expect, I think every person with a reasonable heart or I don’t know, yeah, a common sense to state. So, I mean, yes, maybe I’ll talk a little bit to the point of us being pushed to speak and to, and, and to take up a more vocal stance.

I think for us, and this is something that I’ve found myself trying to convey, again, to my community on numerous occasions is for the ICRC, but even more so for the populations which it serves, to which it provides humanitarian aid, there is a lot at stake when we speak publicly. And we have to be extremely cautious in the choice of our words.

And this is by the way, not, not unique for the region, for the Middle East, for Israel or Gaza. This is true for any of the conflicts in which we operate. Because we are being scrutinized on a very high level by both sides and by both parties. We need to, as you said, we need to dance this very uncomfortable dance at times.

And I say this because what is at stake is the price of access, and we have paid that price in the past. I won’t mention specific context, but there have been different states, different countries where we have spoken up and the price was us being kicked out of that country. And I think it’s not about ICRC seeking to gain more passport stamps. It’s about the population who pays the price at the end of the day. It’s the people that can benefit from those services that we offer.

And that’s what leads this conscious choice of oftentimes not speaking up or at times speaking in a very antiseptic language that could be seen by many as alienated or insensitive or very cold. I get that. I understand why people, and I oftentimes read it as such. But at the same time, we always have to balance what’s at stake and that’s our ability to, to provide assistance to people.

Yehuda: So there’s one or two or maybe more, I think, deeper pragmatic concerns about the, even the simplicity of that message, which are so, you know, the ICRC advocates for the provision of humanitarian aid. And I think most people, most moral people on planet Earth would support, even if they are advocates of one side of a conflict, ensuring the protection of civilians who are caught on the other side.

What’s been very complicated for Israelis, for Jews, who support this war is, okay, I want to make sure that I’m killing combatants, and I’m not killing civilians. But what happens when the other side disguises itself as civilians, embeds itself within a civilian population? And I think more pressingly for this particular issue, so long as Hamas has controlled Gaza, they also control the flow of the humanitarian aid.

And it’s visible to the naked eye that it’s running through Hamas. And there really has never been a war in history where one army feeds the other army. That’s like crazy the way most wars in human history are won is ultimately because the other army doesn’t have enough resources to continue fighting the war.

So that’s a place where there is a real challenge between the simplicity of the moral message and why it’s hard for people to hear it. Because the demand for humanitarian aid comes across as, in this particular context, a demand for Israelis of prolonging the war and potentially ensuring the long term survival of Hamas.

So what are the, without, again, I know you can’t be critical of governments in this place, but how are the parties in the conflict supposed to hear the simplicity of the moral message of we support the provision of humanitarian aid when they perceive it as being counter to their interest?

Noa: So just to clarify, when you say the parties, do you mean the parties to the conflict, which for us are the authorities with whom we engage?

Yehuda: Well, certainly the Israeli government, in this case, let’s use that as an example, but also the Israeli public. That gets out to the question of why does an NGO arguing for the provision of humanitarian aid becoming coded to the public as being not just neutral in this conflict, but somehow not helping.

Noa: So that’s a very good question. I think it also begs the question of, what are the differences between what is said publicly and what is communicated bilaterally. And this is why I asked… if we’re talking about our listeners, I’m not surprised why they would have a lot of the misconceptions that they have in my mind.

It’s a misconception because there is a significant gap between what we would communicate to an authority, a government, an armed group, whatever entity it is that we’re engaging with. That’s a channel of dialogue where you would have far more nuances. This is where we would raise our concerns about what we are seeing, potential violations of international humanitarian law. This is exactly how the context and the analysis of an organization such as ourselves is conveyed, and the dialogue should be held.

But what the public hears is basically a reduction of what we can say and pronounce ourselves on. So there is a big gap between what the public hears and what goes on behind the scenes in a bilateral and confidential manner. If what the public sees is ICRC pushing for a certain objective, a humanitarian principle, let’s say, let’s call it, I think this is a good opportunity to reassure that it goes together with a lot of nuance and counter efforts to be able to reach that goal in a way that doesn’t interfere or does not entail other violations of the law. I’m not sure if that’s clear.

Yehuda: In other words, when the public sees advocacy on behalf of humanitarian aid, if that’s all they see, and they think that all that’s happening is ICRC putting out a Facebook post saying we demand the provision of humanitarian aid, then it’s legitimate for the public to say, well, that has no nuance. It has no context. And then, you know, it’s legitimate for Israel to come along and say, we want to do that because we’re aiding Hamas. But if it’s accompanied by a quiet advocacy strategy that’s not visible to the general public, then it takes on much more teeth and it has much more significance.

But I still think I would want to know, and you probably, I don’t know how much you can share about this. Honestly, I would want to know what is that, what is the private messages, what is something that is shared that in private and confidential channels, because I think it’s really hard for a non-governmental organization to insist to the general public, trust us. What’s happening privately or what’s happening in confidence, that’s where the real work is taking place. I think that’s the trust gap, right?

Noa: I agree. I agree 100%. I think a lot of what we’re trying to do, especially seeing how the environmental atmosphere evolved in relation to our role. And we’ve seen that happening in Israel and we’ve seen that happening outside of it in Jewish communities around the world. We realized that while we are very limited in what we can say publicly, We need to be able to provide more context and to foster a better understanding of our role.

So what we have done in the past year, I would say, was to engage more broadly with communities in person. And this kind of dialogue allows us, first of all, to attach a face to the organization that has up until that moment been, you know, limited to a cross.

And second, yeah, to provide more nuance. I think, you know, many people When I meet people, they’re just overwhelmed to learn that ICRC has Israeli employees or Jewish employees, and that it operates in Israel. I think many things that we take for granted within the organization are just not clear to the public.

So, and I realize I’m not going to convince each and every one in our community. But at the same time, I think we are responsible if we want to maintain that space for us to be able to operate. We have to put effort in restoring that trust that we acknowledge has been damaged.

Yehuda: Yeah. I mean, it goes without saying, but I don’t think people necessarily pay attention to it. As much criticism as there is of the ICRC by folks who identify as pro Israel, the IDF works with the ICRC, right? So even on the coordination of the hostage release, the fact that official government channels are in conversation with the ICRC to make that happen, that they trust you to handle it, means that it’s just a little strange when people are more pro Israel than the army. Right? Or more, or defending the dignity and integrity of the Jewish people in the state of Israel more than the mechanism that the IDF is functionally going to use, whether or not they have some criticism of the ICRC throughout this war.

Noa: No, thanks for raising this Yehuda, because this is a, this is a very important point.

I think if I had to give our listeners hooks or, you know, signals that I would want them to kind of take note of in the future when they consume news or information. Definitely, I would want them to look at the facts on the ground, and the facts are that when it comes to a release operation, like the ones that we’re now seeing taking place in Gaza, in which ICRC takes a meaningful role, these operations require the highest level of security coordination that is taking place, in the highest, you can imagine the state of Israel would entrust this sensitive operation with the highest, the top echelon of security agencies in Israel.

And so this is one indication that, I mean, I think it speaks for itself, even without me saying it, that there is a high level of trust between the security level and the ICRC in order to be able to conduct such a thing.

Other indications are ICRC’s presence in Israel and in Gaza and the West Bank throughout so many years. In fact, the ICRC has been present in Israel since 1967 and in the territories consecutively. Factually. It has been able to conduct its role on different levels and to provide different areas of humanitarian assistance. That is certainly and, you know, strictly relied upon the consent of the Israeli government. It has to be done in coordination with the COGAT, with the IDF.

So this is another thing that I, I would like people to have in mind when they think of the ICRC as this alien entity. At the end of the day, the truth is that ICRC has been deployed in Israel for many, many years. It maintains this dialogue with different levels within the leadership in Israel, not only at the military level, but also at the political level. And this is something that, I mean, working there, having worked in Tel Aviv up until last year, I can certainly say that the level of coordination is impressive.

Yehuda: I think the two pieces that are simply most painful and most difficult to watch were first, that the Red Cross couldn’t visit the hostages, and care for them, which I think many of us see as the primary function of that neutrality is to be able to get access to be able to report back. And the second was to watch these chaotic scenes where it genuinely looked, whether or not the security coordination was good, it genuinely looked like terrifying to see these hostages being played out in public. And although Hamas at this point is incentivized to ensure that they get safely returned, there’s no reason to believe if you’re watching it that they’re not in danger.

Now on the second one feels easier. I went online and on the ICRC site, you responded to that and said, of course, we don’t want people jumping on our ambulances. We oppose that. We think it’s bad, but, I don’t know. I think there’s something about both of those cases that it comes across as powerlessness. And sometimes powerlessness is because you don’t have power, and sometimes powerlessness is perceived as you don’t have courage. So can you respond to those fears a little bit?

Noa: Sure. I think it’s crucial that we acknowledge that while we as the ICRC, we have been pushing and advocating on so many different levels. First of all, for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. Regardless of any classification that you can think of, this has been the first message and the key message that we continue to push for to this day. Not only with Hamas, by the way, but with any party that we think could have any potential influence on that situation. So that’s one.

Other than that, the message was, until that happens, until they are released, until the last of them is released, ICRC has to gain access to those people. We have to gain access in order to provide them with medical care, not only with medicines. So, you know, you, you were probably very well familiar with the, you know, the stories about the medicines. It’s not only about handing medicines. I mean, IDF has been operating in Gaza for over a year now and placing medicines at a certain point is not the issue at hand.

The ICRC, when it engages in such an operation, needs to ensure that as we call them the beneficiaries or the victims, the people being held hostage receive that medical care. We also acknowledge that their medical situation has deteriorated immensely from how it was prior to their being taken hostage. So these are all considerations that we think of when we say we want and we need to provide them with medical care.

And finally, we have to restore their link with their families that are so desperately. They’re agonizing to get a proof of life. You know, there are different ways of doing that around the world when we get access Red Cross messages. Going back to the first point, we need to be cognizant that this has not been the case up until now. We haven’t been able to secure that access. We don’t know where the hostages are being held. And that’s a very painful truth. And that’s a truth that we, we all, my colleagues that work with me in Israel and that I work with in New York and, you know, all around the world, we wake up, yeah, with this acknowledgement that the mission is not yet completed. And the fact that that is not yet the case does not mean we’re not working to make sure that happens.

So that’s something that I think should be said. And again, as circling back to what I said at the beginning, sometimes we say something publicly, but unfortunately it doesn’t really land as we would want to. So I really would love for the people to know that, you know, there is a genuine hope that we manage to gain that access. And I think we also, I mean, this lies in the back of people’s, when the choice of not speaking up publicly and not risking our access, this hope that we might be able to fulfill the mission is always a guiding and an underlying scenario that informs what we do and how we talk.

Yehuda: Meaning the decision not to speak publicly is in order to be able to try to continue to make the case, which has not been honored by Hamas throughout, that you’ll be able to one day be able to get access to the hostages.

Noa: Yes.

Yehuda: I guess there’s two other kind of credibility challenges that the ICRC faces, and I think they’re serious.

One is, we’ll do them one at a time. One is the, what I see is just a lack of credibility of international humanitarian organizations operating in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank. Since October 7th, we saw the inability by a number of international human rights organization to take seriously the accusations of sexual violence that took place on October 7th. A great deal of equivocation about the legitimacy of the Hamas attacks. Because if you make the larger claim that all of it is the result of occupation, then it makes you kind of blind to the particular atrocities, the in-distinguishing between civilians and combatants, all of those things.

So it feels legitimate to me in my mind that a lot of folks are like, well, I guess a lot of this whole business of international humanitarian concerns emanated out of the original genocide of the middle of the 20th century for the Jews. A lot of the literature and history comes out of this. And now I’m skeptical about whether or not we’re getting a fair shake.

So how does the ICRC, you can disagree with that hypothesis, but how does the ICRC navigate both being kind of part of a world of international human rights NGOs, but actually operating very differently. Because you’re not issuing, you know, 250 page reports, you know, declaring an apartheid reality, because that’s not your line of work. But presumably you operate within a nexus and a world of international human rights organizations. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic?

Noa: Sure. Thank you. The way you kind of captured it really resonates because we’re, as you said previously, we are oftentimes being pushed to take actions that do not necessarily fall within our methods of work. I mean, that’s a key point in maintaining our integrity and sticking to our principles is to say, while we understand the public sentiment, we don’t refute it. We live within those communities where we operate.

And again, as I said, people working for the ICRC are humans. When you’re faced with such tragedies, unless you’re heartless, you respond to that in a humane way. You know, my non Jewish colleagues at work telling me that they haven’t slept at night because they had Kfir and Ariel Bibas coming up in their dreams.

And I mean, that goes with me because, I mean, for me, it really kind of shows that when you do this humanitarian work, you can’t avoid being impacted on the humane and personal level. So while we understand the public sentiment and we feel it and we’re oftentimes, you know, even a part of it on the personal level, we have to make sure that we stick to the unique principles and methods that ICRC follows all around the world. We have to be very consistent in not condemning and not speaking oftentimes to horrific things that we see on all ends. And this can be very challenging.

Also on the personal level, I can say we chose a very peculiar field of work, where on a daily or maybe an hourly basis, sometimes you’re exposed to horrifying things and your heart tells you to, you know, to say something about it. But you need to remember that on the institutional level, you’re examined by so many eyes, you have to be very, very prudent.

Yehuda: So does the ICRC then, like, not hang out with the other international human rights organizations? Like, how does that work? Because you’re going to be grouped together kind of whether you like it or not. My sense is that’s a little bit of the guilt by association around this particular piece of work is, well, this whole field has become, I don’t know, morally endangered.

Noa: I realize that I, on a daily basis, I’m engaged in conversations where people don’t know to distinguish between the Red Cross and the UN, and they think of us as the same organization, which is not the case at all. So no, we don’t alienate ourselves from NGOs because I think it also goes back to what I mentioned earlier about us having to interact with everyone.

Yehuda: Bilateral and confidential.

Noa: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if we try to be confidential when we engage with others who are not authorities as such, but we interact with whoever has an influence, can inform our understanding on all ends, on all spectrums, politically.

Socially, I think a part of our challenge because we work in highly polarized areas and states or territories is to foster acceptance and to really understand the context where we operate. And that entails speaking to whoever can inform your understanding. So yes, certainly we’re, we’re definitely a part of that landscape and we interact with international organizations or human rights groups for that matter. But at the same time, we are very rigid about the steps that we take, how public we are. We don’t…

Yehuda: You stay in your lane.

Noa: Yeah, exactly.

Yehuda: You know, the other credibility challenge, of course, is the historical one, right? Which is hard to avoid in any conversation with Jews about the Red Cross, which is that the German Red Cross during World War II came under the authority of the Nazi party and the Nazi government. It identified itself as in support of Hitler’s regime. It failed to take seriously the, what it actually saw in terms of atrocities and it was taken in by the manufactured version of those atrocities at Theresienstadt. I think it’s legitimate and hard to shake that for many Jews. That story has altered the perspective on what it means to have a neutral party coming to witness atrocities. Has the ICRC engaged with that history, especially as it pertains to playing a major role in the Jewish state?

Noa: Look, Yehuda, the Holocaust has been publicly acknowledged by different ICRC presidents throughout the history as ICRC’s biggest failure in its history. It’s failure to protect civilians and specifically the Jewish population from being massacred in that sense, resonates very, very strongly within the organization and has informed, interestingly, I think has informed the ways in which the organization evolved post World War II.

I think one key development that I could mention is the adoption of the Fourth Geneva Convention after the Second World War, after the Holocaust, which is essentially aimed at protecting civilians in armed conflicts. You would think, because we have had this convention in place for some time now, that it would be very basic to have protections under international law for civilians caught up in conflict. But the fact of the matter is that the Holocaust, it taught the world the lesson that led to the adoption of this very important legal instrument that today is really the mandate of what the ICRC does. So that’s one point.

But also internally as an organization, I know that there have been steps taken on the administrative level on how to construct the democratic structure of the ICRC in order to avoid repeating the leadership being implicated in such situations and, yeah, being associated with the back in the days, the Nazi government. I think this is really also informed the internal setup of the organization in order to prevent reoccurrence of any such a thing.

And maybe I’ll say another word, if we’ve touched upon the Holocaust. One other thing that I sometimes hear when I speak to people in my community is stories of Red Cross delegates that have saved, in their personal capacity, Holocaust survivors, during that time. And just this week I’ve heard of a colleague, a bit more senior than I am, but whose family has been, yeah, saved by an ICRC delegate back in the days, which kind of creates this link between him and the organization. So there were these stories, they were too scant.

And this is indeed a very, very painful episode. I think no one shies away from it. And I think this is something, as in any other context, I, you know, being raised in Israel, the Holocaust has been a key part in history throughout my upbringing. So I think as in any other aspect in my life or in the world’s collective history, it has affected the ICRC as well to a very great extent.

Yehuda: So since you alluded to your personal background, I just want to ask you one question about that, which is, it would seem to me that, I don’t know, given the intensity of this conflict, it seems like an interesting journey to go from representing Israel in the international community, and even as a, an expert and a voice on international law, advising the Israeli government, it feels like a big move to go from working inside the Israeli government to working for a neutral NGO as an Israeli.

I’d love for you to share a little bit about that journey for you, about what was involved in making that transition and, and I guess, not just where you see the differences, but where you see the throughlines, the consistency between doing that work as an Israeli national, as Israeli citizen for the state of Israel versus doing the work you do now for the ICRC.

Noa: Sure. I would start by saying I was very lucky, because my transition was maybe to the surprise of people and myself included, was highly supported by both sides, by both my employer, the Ministry of Justice and the ICRC. So I think this for me was also a signal telling, you know, about the closeness or the relationship or their, let’s say the mutual respect between the Israeli authorities and the ICRC.

So my romance with ICRC started in my military service. I was a liaison officer. Initially, I was based up North on the Syrian and Lebanese border, liaising with the UN peacekeeping forces, but also with the ICRC. So it goes, I won’t say how long ago, but our relationship goes way back and ICRC has always been there in the background for me, especially as I delved into my career and in the field of international law, it is oftentimes being referred to as the guardian of international humanitarian law. It is an authoritative entity when it comes to interpreting and to developing international humanitarian law. So this has always been, you know, for me, an organization to look up to in terms of its legal work and scholarship.

And I was very lucky for the opportunity to join back in 2021. The way I see it, what I appreciate about the ICRC, the way the ICRC conducts itself in areas of conflict is the place that it provides to its local employees to inform its work. And this has been my feeling throughout my journey with the ICRC.

And I think it’s not to be taken for granted that an international organization with such massive humanitarian experience operating in so many, as I said, 100 places around the world, engaging with 60 countries that are in armed conflict, 120 armed groups, but still knowing or remembering that without its local people, it is really unable to do its job. It’s an integral part of the way it understands its mission. I think this has been a key aspect for me.

I felt that the knowledge that I was bringing from, be it the military or, or civil service have always been essential for the organization in knowing how to conduct itself within this environment, which, well, you know, Israel, as well as I do, you know, it could be sometimes tricky or challenging. And I’ve always felt that this knowledge is well appreciated and is well being taken into consideration. And for that,, I’m very, very, very thankful.

And I also want to say another thing in that respect, as I have felt after October 7th, I think I felt that many people around me have experienced a lot of hopelessness, naturally, because it was just a hopeless situation to be in. I think many of us are still walking around with that feeling when we think of the people that are currently still held in Gaza.

And I am thankful for the ICRC on the personal level because it has given me a sense of purpose in that very hopeless situation. And I’m not, I’m acknowledging that there is so much more to do and that the humanitarian needs are grave and that there are still people being held hostage. There are still people displaced in my country, people injured, there is so much more that should be done, but at the same time, I was lucky to wake up in the morning, and have the feeling that I work for a place that might have an impact. And for that, I’m very grateful.

I’m also very grateful for another thing that ICRC has given me and that’s hope and that goes back to your point initially about our people losing appetite for a future solution.

I think what I took from these months, what I took strength in is knowing that while our world is gradually and tragically collapsing around us. And this idea, this appetite, as you said, for a future solution is crumbling. I can go to work and work together with my Palestinian colleagues, with my non-Jewish colleagues, people coming from all around the world, uniting for humanity.

And this comes across as a cliché, but I, I can tell you Yehuda that this has been, and still is, working for the ICC. This is the sense that follows me at work every day. I think it’s something, it’s, it’s big because it’s, again, it’s not something that I take for granted the ability on the week after October 7th to be able to, sorry for the grim example, but to buy body bags to provide to Israeli authorities, which is one of the things that we have done within Israel together with my Palestinian colleagues. And the question of who is the person we’re, we’re providing assistance to is, is just irrelevant. Because we don’t see people according to their tribal affiliation. It’s just what we see. Before our eyes is, are we able to support that person because they’re human beings, not because they’re Jews, Palestinians, Russians, or Ukrainians?

Yehuda: Well, you know, we talked mostly today about criticisms of this work, and it’s a reminder that peacemaking is hopeful. And it is unrewarded until it actually works. And until that time, the resistance that is borne by so many, which is rooted in oftentimes fears of change and what’s going to have to change.

Noa: Thank you so much, Yehuda. Thanks for having me.