EiGHT is a privately funded, politically independent, non-profit initiative based in Geneva. It was founded by professionals with direct experience across major international NGOs, who, after the October 7 massacre<\/a>, \u201cfound the reaction of organizations to be very troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n After Haas left Human Rights Watch<\/a> in November 2023, after 14 years, she started connecting with other people in the organization she had not had contact with before, and they began to share experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I had taken to be personal experiences in the organization, I suddenly realized were actually shared by other people. That these were not individual problems but rather systemic ones,\u201d she told the Post.<\/p>\n Haas put everyone together in a WhatsApp group, and they collectively decided to share their experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cAs people committed to human rights and humanitarianism, we felt what\u2019s going on in these organizations is incredibly dangerous. Dangerous because these organizations are embedded in the fabric of decision-making within modern society, and they are woven into our academic structures, and our legal structures, and media, and they are treated as infallible, and truth itself, and we knew for a fact that there are issues that require scrutiny, like any other industry,\u201d she told the Post.<\/p>\n \u201cThese human rights and humanitarian groups are really the ground zero for the world we\u2019re living in today, because out of them came, for example, the label of apartheid.<\/p>\n \u201cHuman Rights Watch was the first large American human rights organization to come out with this in 2021, followed by Amnesty in 2022. So they are the formulators, they are the legitimizers, and they are the propagators of concepts of apartheid and genocide that we\u2019re all living with today. They have given them legitimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n EiGHT just launched Insiders Speak, a report by over 70 staff from human rights and humanitarian organizations (including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace) revealing antisemitism, methodological failures and retaliation.<\/p>\n The 63-page submission represents the first independent and extensive account of how the human rights and humanitarian NGO sector has failed to uphold the values it exists to promote, drawn primarily from the first-hand experiences of professionals from within it.<\/p>\n Among the key findings of the report are that antisemitism is tolerated within human rights NGOs, and there is retaliation against those who dissent. The report also reveals a pervasive lack of accountability, amounting to structural accountability failures rather than isolated incidents.<\/p>\n Systemic antisemitic pollution of international NGO spaces<\/p>\n \u201cJewish employees raised concerns openly at first. Then less often. Then not at all. In time, they were all gone.\u201d \u2013 NGO staffer from international NGO.<\/p>\n The submission draws on first-hand accounts from more than 70 professionals within the human rights, humanitarian, development, and environmental NGO sector, as well as a review of internal documents, communications, and secondary sources, including media reporting and academic literature.<\/p>\n All the professionals whose experiences are reflected in the report are either still working in their NGOs, remain in the sector, or left within the last four years. A significant proportion have left since October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n One of the persistent challenges addressed in the report is that there is a lack of consensus on defining antisemitism, which delays or avoids addressing conduct that is clearly unacceptable.<\/p>\n The submission therefore does not confine itself to definitions, and instead focuses on observable culture and behavior that targets or negatively affects Jewish and Israeli staff, colleagues perceived as sympathetic to their concerns, or individuals raising concerns about work related to Israel-Palestine.<\/p>\n The report says that a key feature of antisemitism in the human rights and humanitarian sphere is that it is barely acknowledged and often coded.<\/p>\n One employee of a global environmental NGO said: \u201cIn my circles, the issue is not individual cases of antisemitism or open Jew-hatred. The issue is a kind of systemic pollution of international NGO spaces and transnational federations with the constant demonization of Israel, the total acquittal of Palestinian leadership, and the adoption of anti-Israel language, like genocide, intifada, settler-colonialism, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n Many staffers described environments in which antisemitism was reframed as political disagreement and deflected into debates about Israel and Zionism, rather than recognized as a distinct form of discrimination.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/658064.jpeg\"\/)
A Human Rights Watch flag is pictured on the Mont-Blanc bridge in Geneva, Switzerland, November 7, 2024. (credit: REUTERS\/DENIS BALIBOUSE)<\/p>\n