For a long time the otherwise admirable organization Doctors Without Borders (also known as “MSF” for its French name Médecins Sans Frontières) has been accused of antisemitism. The accusations have been credible enough to make me curb my donations to the group. I still regret having donated over $10,000 to the organization after Kelly Houle and I auctioned off a copy of Why Evolution is True that I got autographed by multiple scientists and celebrities, including two Nobel Laureates. Kelly had also beautifully illuminated and gilded the book, so it was quite the showpiece. I don’t know where that money went after we sent it to MSF, but the organization won’t be getting any more dosh from me. That’s a pity, as otherwise they’d be in my will and lined up to get a lot more money: in the six figures. Well, such is the result of Jew hating.
Since the book auction, which occurred well before the Israel/Hamas war, more evidence has come out about MSF’s antisemitism. First, Israel expelled the organization from Gaza this year because it wouldn’t provide the names of its staff and operations in Gaza so they could be checked for membership in Hamas or terrorist activities. Second, as documented in the Jewish Chronicle article below, the organization has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” while condemning Hamas only once (for the October 7 attack). The genocide canard, as Maarten Boudry shows in his article “They don’t believe it either,” is without merit; there’s no evidence that Israel has been on a campaign to wipe out Palestinians. And since MSF’s accusations of genocide are public, you can’t say that Israel or Jews are making them up. (You can see one on MSF’s own site.)
Since any support for terrorism or ideological tilting towards Gaza and against Israel violates MSF’s own policy of political neutrality, there’s even less justification for its accusations. I’ve called out the organization before (see my posts here and here), and this will be the third and probably last time. Click below to read the Jewish Chronicle piece.
A few excerpts (indented):
. . . interviews and internal material reviewed by the JC suggest that the organisation’s principle of témoignage, or “bearing witness”, has taken on a political character in relation to Israel.
MSF public statements started using the term “genocide” to describe the Gaza war in November 2024.
One former employee described “pushback” when it was first adopted, citing concerns about the lack of “legal rigour” behind the claim.
MSF leaders have for years made such similar statements about the Jewish state. In January 2025, shortly before becoming international president of MSF, Javid Abdelmoneim reposted a message on X claiming that Israel had “transformed Jewish symbols into symbols of genocide” and was “the greatest threat to Judaism & the Jewish people on planet earth”.
In another repost, Abdelmoneim – who has endorsed a full boycott of the Jewish state – shared a message describing Israel as “a colony of settlers that continue to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinian population”.
Michael Goldfarb spent more than 15 years at MSF US. He claimed anti-Israel sentiment was at times “tolerated” by those at the top.
He said: “European colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.”
He recalled one colleague expressing outrage at being mistaken for Israeli while abroad.
At a restaurant with MSF colleagues in northern Italy, in a town’s former Jewish quarter, one colleague told Goldfarb: “There better not be Israeli flags here.”
He said: “Nothing 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.”
And there’s this:
On October 17, 2023, after an explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, MSF’s international account posted that it was “horrified by the recent Israeli bombing… This is a massacre”. The blast was later attributed to a misfired Palestinian rocket. The MSF post remains online.
In November 2023, as Israeli forces said they would target Hamas operatives allegedly using Al-Shifa Hospital, MSF staff were present at the facility. The organisation said it had “seen no evidence” that Hamas was using the hospital as a military base. Months later, US intelligence confirmed Hamas had used parts of the complex for storing weapons and holding hostages.
This one is particularly telling, as everybody now knows that the rocket that exploded in the Al-Ahli parking lot was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel. But MSF won’t take down its false accusation. I’ve put its tweet below
We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing of Ahli Arab Hospital in #Gaza City, which was treating patients and hosting displaced Gazans. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. This is a massacre. It is absolutely unacceptable…
— MSF International (@MSF) October 17, 2023
Of course MSF says that the “genocide” canard is justified, but read Boudry’s article to see the “genocidal statements” that supposedly support the canard. They were few, were directed at Hamas. and have not been translated into action. Futher, Hamas, despite its agreement for the cease-fire, has not disarmed and is still in charge in southern Gaza, and it’s still stealing and diverting humanitarian aid to Gaza. Hamas must be not only disarmed but dissolved.
The [MSF] spokesperson went on: “Like many others, we were horrified by Hamas’ massacre in Israel on October 7, and we are horrified by Israel’s response. While providing extensive humanitarian assistance in Gaza we have witnessed mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, repeated failures to protect civilians, immense destruction by Israeli forces, the near-total dismantling of the healthcare system, and the weaponisation and restriction of lifesaving aid. Israeli officials have made multiple, well-documented dehumanising statements calling for the annihilation or forced transfer of the population.
“The only reasonable conclusion is that the intention is to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza. For this reason, we believe a genocide is taking place.
So MSF won’t get dime one from me. However, if you do want to donate to the civilians of Gaza through NGOs that have not been banned by Israel, and have a decent reputation, here’s what Grok suggests. I’ve added links:
ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid): A U.S.-based, non-political, non-religious organization providing food parcels, hygiene kits, medical care, and livelihoods support directly in Gaza (with recent distributions in 2026, often partnering with WFP). It holds 4-star Charity Navigator ratings and GuideStar Platinum Seal for transparency and impact.
PCRF (Palestine Children’s Relief Fund): U.S.-based nonprofit specializing in pediatric medical care, surgeries, mental health, and emergency aid (food, supplies) for children in Gaza. It has earned consistent 4-star Charity Navigator ratings (one of the highest for accountability) and focuses on long-term recovery without political affiliations.
DIRECT RELIEF. Delivers medical supplies, kits, and grants to health facilities in Gaza via partners. It is internationally respected with 4-star ratings and focuses purely on health aid in crises.
Tips for donating effectively:
- Visit the organizations’ official websites and designate funds for “Gaza” or “Palestine emergency” where possible.
- Check current Charity Navigator, CharityWatch, or GuideStar ratings for the latest financial transparency data (most listed above score highly).
- Aid delivery remains extremely challenging due to access issues, but these groups have documented recent distributions and work within approved coordination mechanisms.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/doctors-without-borders-and-the-collapse-of-medical-neutrality/
I missed that one; thanks for the link. (It gives further evidence for MSF’s tilted politics.)
Casual use of the term “genocide” has become a fashion amongst the illuminati.
It is of course applied to the US and to British Commonwealth states. And there is that Winnipeg NDP legislator (formerly a School of Ed academic, of course) who discovered ” the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ ” , mentioned here a few days ago. Perhaps this abuse of language will end up robbing the term “genocide” of meaning in general discourse.
I’ve also noticed that the word is being tossed around casually and is losing meaning. I don’t know why people do this.
The situation is no different in Germany. Left-wing party members, left-leaning media outlets, and well-known figures from the arts and culture use the term “genocide” in connection with Gaza without a second thought. But this fits in with other trends that have emerged since intersectional and identity-based activism has gained a foothold in the public sphere.
If you criticize uncontrolled immigration, you are a “xenophobe.” If you reject gender-affirming treatment of children and adolescents, you are “transphobic.” If a person of color is shot during a police operation, this is promptly attributed to “racist behavior” on the part of the police.
Sadly, misguided people have been softening up the definition of genocide for at least a couple of decades, in all sorts of contexts — mainly I think because the absolute opprobrium of the idea, inviting unconditional condemnation, is something they want to co-opt for their own cause, whatever that is, and using the “nuclear option” of the G-word is a cheap and easy way to do it.
Well, Israel would say it’s not committing genocide wouldn’t it! One thing it is not is an independent unbiased arbiter.
I would trust MSF more than Israel on this matter, flawed behaviour or not.
You judge the genocide by independent means (Boudry is not Jewish, for example). Did you read his article? He’s as close to an independent arbiter that I know. And the MSF accusations are public and, in the case of the hospital “attack”, can be judged. In that case MSF continues to maintain an accusation against Israel that is known to be false.
By no standards that I know of has Israel committed a genocide. Hamas, however, declared in its initial charter that it wanted to kill all the Jews. THAT is an intention to commit genocide.
Perhaps you should look at the evidence. The medical system in Israel (a county of about 20% Arabs/Palestinians) consists of all types of people: Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims. Go into a hospital and you never know who will be treating you, who will be the department chair, doctors, nurses, social workers, technicians, pharmacists…
and if you are hospitalized, your never know who may be your roommate from that list of people.
Hardly a recipe for genocide. But feel free to ask the people treating you. Some of them will certainly be Palestinian.
While it is of course true that a country accused of genocide would deny it, you should still be able to see with your own eyes that Israel isn’t attempting to commit genocide in Gaza (or anywhere.) You don’t need to rely on trusted arbiters to tell you. Genocide is the attempt to eliminate a race in whole or in large part by killing them or subjecting them to conditions (like starvation or herding them into the sea) that will cause most of them to die. Even by Hamas’s own numbers and even if Israel was gratuitously killing them without military justification, it has not come close to doing genocide by definition. If a whole population has become militarized and therefore the whole population has to be killed as combatants or enablers of combat because they won’t stop, that is still not genocide.
Raphael Lemkin was able to convince the member countries of the United Nations to endorse and ratify the Convention on Genocide (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948) only by acceding to their writing it in such as way that no normal military operations, punitive expeditions, historical exterminations, and ordinary pogroms would be included in the definition. The bar is high because the countries of the world didn’t want to limit their war-making and dissent-suppression more than was absolutely necessary to shut Mr. Lemkin up. Member states agreed that they would seek to arrest foreign perpetrators of what looked like genocide and try them in competent courts — in practice it meant they were agreeing to invade and conquer countries to carry out these arrests. Put up or shut up. But no country wanted to open itself to easy pretexts to be invaded by righteous foreigners.
Genocide is an accusation that needs proof beyond reasonable doubt before you can say it occurred or that anyone was guilty of it, because defeated national leaders can be imprisoned for life if convicted. Merely tossing it off as a slur against governments who are doing things you don’t like, as MSF does, is just activist hot air. Not all killing of civilians is a war crime, and not all war crimes are genocide.
A guy I sorta know (friend of an old classmate, I think) who is an atty way up in the NE corner of the inhabited part of Canada periodically launches with the genocide accusation. If I push back, I get some palaver about by this definition from some Accord or something like that… Well, sure, if you write the definition to fit the situation in Israel…
If some of the moderate Arab states would publicly give Israel some approval, things might change, but instead we get crickets.
I’m curious: Are there any prominent left-wing organizations that have neither been ruined by Woke ideology nor tainted with antisemitism?
So glad I cut those people out of my will before I die(d). It required a codicil, but worth it.
On the G. word: Subsidizing the produce-nothing-but horror and Sharia Palestinian/Egyptian population of Gaza, including vaccinations (paid for and done by Israel) is a funny way of going about genocide.
The demographics of the wildly fecund Palestinian population suggest if Israel is committing a genocide, it is really, really incompetent job of it.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Jerry,
Thanks for the info about PCRF, and ANERA. I will continue to chuck my Doctors Without Borders solicitations and contribute to one of the above.
There are so many children and adults living in dire straits in this world that I don’t have a fraction of the money I’d need to give to them all. So I have to pick and choose. While it’s difficult to choose which group to donate to, I am sorry to say that it is easy to choose which group not to donate to, and that is the people of Gaza.
While there’s usually reason to hope that needy children in other places, if they are cared for, have a fair chance of becoming adults who will make the world a better place, or at least not make it worse, that’s not the case in Gaza. Virtually the entire school age population is subjected to an ‘education’ that serves less to actually teach them about the world than to indoctrinate them in a loathsome, regressive, and hate-filled ideology. It’s not healthy for Gazan children, and it’s sure as hell not healthy for Jews and Israelis. So, no. Until something changes for the better, my money will seriously do more good elsewhere.
Arguing that the word “genocide” be used in accord with its proper definition is like arguing for the proper use of other terms, such as “woman” and “girl”. [Any listener to NPR will hear frequent references to “trans girls”, in reality creatures as mythical as mermaids or wood-nymphs.] Misused words become a meme, and some reach ubiquity by simple imitation, in precisely the way fashions get diffused. The mystery is why certain fashions–from powdered wigs in the 17th/18th centuries to recovered memory in the late 20th to the sex spectrum and Israeli genocide in the early 21st—catch on widely for years, while others, like pet rocks, gain only brief rampancy.