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Doctors Without Borders has long cultivated the image of a fearless humanitarian organization, rushing into war zones armed with medicine, compassion, and neutrality. According to a bombshell report from NGO Monitor, however, somewhere along the way the organization appears to have misplaced the neutrality and replaced it with an ideological pamphlet.
The report, Documenting the Antisemitic Organizational Culture of Doctors Without Borders, argues that anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and outright hostility toward Israel are not isolated incidents inside MSF, but have become embedded in the organization's culture.
Drawing on testimony from former senior officials, longtime employees, and Jewish staff members, NGO Monitor concludes that anti-Israel activism has become less of an unfortunate side effect and more of an unofficial job requirement.
According to the report, it is "clear that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias are widespread in MSF's organizational culture and are expressed by both top officials and lower-level staff."
Former MSF Secretary-General Richard Rossin says this transformation is hardly new. Speaking to Canada's National Post in July 2024, Rossin recalled that hostility toward Israel "was perceptible around the beginning of the 80's."
"Anti-Semitism within MSF began under the cover of anti-Zionism. It [the ideological shift] cannot be fixed. How can you fix anti-Semitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?" he said.
Apparently, the organization's commitment to "without borders" did come with at least one exception: Israelis.
Rossin recounted a 2010 mission to Uganda where an MSF Holland contingent reportedly refused to cooperate with an Israeli medical NGO that had arrived to help civilians. The National Post described it as an example of "one-way empathy," where ideological prejudice overpowered the humanitarian mission.
That selective compassion, Rossin believes, continues to influence MSF's work in Gaza today.
Former MSF Secretary-General Alain Destexhe offered an even harsher assessment.
"I 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."
He added:
"MSF is lying, MSF is partial, MSF is biased, and MSF are accomplices of Hamas."
For an organization that constantly lectures the world about impartiality, critics say those are astonishing accusations coming from one of its own former leaders.
Michael Goldfarb, who spent 15 years working for MSF in the United States, described what he says was routine hostility toward both Israel and Jews.
"European colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn't have a right to exist."
He said the atmosphere inside the organization had become saturated with ideological extremism.
"You see extreme ideological fervor, Israel as a Nazi state, Jews as the oppressive, colonial, white supremacists, Zionism as Nazism," Goldfarb said. "Nothing meaningful has been done to address anti-Semitism, to show solidarity with Jewish staff, or call out this hate. That creates a permissive environment in which it flourishes."
One has to wonder how an organization dedicated to healing people became so comfortable demonizing the world's only Jewish state while apparently ignoring the hatred directed at its own Jewish employees.
Dr. Estrella Lasry, who served as a tropical medicine advisor at MSF's Geneva headquarters for more than a decade, described what she called an institutional indifference toward Israelis murdered by Hamas.
She recalled "the appalling lack of empathy in the organization towards the victims in Israel."
When she challenged the organization's messaging, the response was not exactly a master class in open dialogue.
"I said our communication was biased and for an organization 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 … I was told I was part of the 'Israeli propaganda machine' in a meeting, and nobody flinched."
According to NGO Monitor, the hostility extends beyond private conversations.
The report says MSF's internal staff forum, known as "the Souk," has featured posts declaring: "The fight for freedom … is about liberating the world from the grip of Zionism…"; "Israel is a '76-year-old crime scene'"; and "As for the accusation of rape against Palestinian resistance fighters, I believe these are propaganda."
If accurate, those statements suggest that conspiracy theories and terrorist apologetics have found a surprisingly comfortable home inside an organization that insists it operates above politics.
"Clearly, the organization has blatantly and repeatedly violated its claim to act on the basis of neutrality, impartiality, and independence," NGO Monitor concluded.
The report further alleges that complaints about systemic anti-Semitism were routinely brushed aside by leadership, while those raising concerns found themselves ignored or marginalized.
NGO Monitor argues that meaningful reform will require far more than another diversity seminar or carefully worded press release. It recommends sweeping structural changes, new leadership, independent oversight, and greater accountability for board members and institutional funders.
For critics, the central question is no longer whether Doctors Without Borders has opinions about Israel. Every individual is entitled to opinions.
The question is whether an organization that depends on public trust and donor support can continue presenting itself as politically neutral while, according to former insiders, cultivating an environment where anti-Zionism increasingly serves as a socially acceptable mask for anti-Semitism.
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