{"id":526657,"date":"2026-07-05T17:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526657\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T17:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:20:09","slug":"msf-plagued-by-deep-rooted-antisemitism-anti-zionism-ngo-monitor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526657\/","title":{"rendered":"MSF plagued by deep-rooted antisemitism, anti-Zionism, NGO Monitor says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Antisemitism<\/a>, antizionism, and other expressions of hostility are “deeply rooted” within Doctors Without Borders (MSF)<\/a>, claimed NGO Monitor in its new report ‘Documenting the Antisemitic Organizational Culture of Doctors Without Borders.’<\/p>\n

The report documents MSF\u2019s internal staff conversations and culture regarding Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the personal experiences of Jewish staff members within the organization.<\/p>\n

Based on these many testimonials by MSF insiders, NGO Monitor says it is “clear that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias are widespread in MSF\u2019s organizational culture<\/a> and are expressed by both top officials and lower-level staff.”<\/p>\n

One testimony is from former MSF Secretary-General Richard Rossin, who, on July 13, 2024, told Canada\u2019s National Post that the ideological bias against Israel “was perceptible around the beginning of the 80\u2019s.”<\/p>\n

“Antisemitism within MSF began under the cover of anti-Zionism. It [the ideological shift] cannot be fixed. How can you fix antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?” he said.<\/p>\n

\"AA Palestinian boy walks past the clinic of Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on January 11, 2026. (credit: OMAR AL-QATTAA\/AFP via Getty Images)MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team\u00a0<\/p>\n

The National Post wrote, \u201cRossin recalled his experience in 2010 on a mission to Uganda when an MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team dispatched to help. Rossin remembered it as an episode of \u2018one-way empathy,\u2019 where prejudice had poisoned the MSF team\u2019s ability to cooperate with Israel in their shared goal of helping civilians. He feels these same issues continue to plague MSF\u2019s mission in Gaza today.\u201d<\/p>\n

NGO Monito<\/a>r also draws on the words of Alain Destexhe, a doctor with MSF in the 1980s and its Secretary-General in the 1990s. In an October 2025 interview, Destexhe stated: \u201cI think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel. Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMSF is lying, MSF is partial, MSF is biased, and MSF are accomplices of Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Goldfarb, who is Jewish, spent 15 years at MSF \/ Doctors without Borders US. He told The Jewish Chronicle of London in March 2026 that \u201cEuropean colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn\u2019t have a right to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see extreme ideological fervour, Israel as a Nazi state, Jews as the oppressive, colonial, white supremacists, Zionism as Nazism,\u201d \u00a0Goldfarb said. \u201cNothing meaningful has been done to address antisemitism, to show solidarity with Jewish staff, or call out this hate. That creates a permissive environment in which it flourishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Estrella Lasry, a tropical medicine advisor and consultant in the Medical Branch of MSF\u2019s Geneva headquarters from approximately 2011 to approximately 2025, said she experienced “the appalling lack of empathy in the organisation towards the victims in Israel.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI said our communication was biased and for an organisation that claims to be impartial, it was creating a biased, skewed, false narrative around what was actually going on. It was giving a very one-sided view \u2026 I was told I was part of the \u2018Israeli propaganda machine\u2019 in a meeting, and nobody flinched.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antisemitism is also reportedly widespread on MSF\u2019s closed online staff forum<\/p>\n

Antisemitism is also reportedly widespread on MSF\u2019s closed online staff forum, known internally as \u201cthe Souk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posts on MSF\u2019s internal communication channel since October 7, 2023, include: \u201cThe fight for freedom \u2026 is about liberating the world from the grip of Zionism\u2026\u201d; “Israel is a \u201c76-year-old crime scene\u201d and “As for the accusation of rape against Palestinian resistance fighters, I believe these are propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Clearly, the organization has blatantly and repeatedly violated its claim to act on the basis of neutrality, impartiality, and independence, ” said NGO Monitor.<\/p>\n

The report adds that officials routinely dismissed the evidence of systemic antisemitism and requests to take action against the hatred.<\/p>\n

In order to address the “toxic organizational culture of antisemitism and antizionism,” NGO Monitor suggests fundamental changes in MSF\u2019s structure, leadership, and staffing at both the international level and among the many country branches and sections.<\/p>\n

Additionally, it suggested independent oversight frameworks be established to ensure that MSF\u2019s leaders, including board members and funder-enablers, are held accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Antisemitism, antizionism, and other expressions of hostility are “deeply rooted” within Doctors Without Borders (MSF), claimed NGO Monitor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111,16607,213384,13935,50,42,43,88088,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-526657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-antisemitism","tag-antizionism","tag-bias","tag-doctors-without-borders","tag-gaza","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-ngo-monitor","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}