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Silence and Bias: When NGOs Lose Their Moral Compass

Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios

On October 7, 2023, the world witnessed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas terrorists stormed across the border, butchering families, burning homes, and taking hundreds of hostages, while Hezbollah joined in by launching rockets from Lebanon.

For most people, this was a day of horror. For the world’s leading humanitarian organizations, however, it became another opportunity to blame Israel.

The Selective Outrage of Humanitarian Groups

Instead of directing their moral outrage toward Hamas and Hezbollah, many NGOs chose to focus their fire on Israel.

Amnesty International, for instance, has published multiple reports accusing Israel of genocide. In its December 2024 publication, tellingly titled “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman,” Amnesty concluded: “Israel is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by killing members of the group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.”

Earlier in 2025, Amnesty doubled down, releasing a statement that Israel was “pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation as a weapon of war, which constitutes a form of genocide.”

Such sweeping accusations, leveled without context about Hamas’ role in starting the war, hoarding aid, building tunnels under hospitals, and deliberately embedding among civilians, reveal less about facts on the ground and more about political framing.

Oxfam’s Numbers Without Context

Oxfam, too, has amplified this one-sided narrative. In January 2025, it contributed to a survey of aid organizations, claiming that “89% of humanitarian groups report that Israel’s restrictions obstructed aid delivery, and 93% noted worsening conditions in Gaza.”

While the figures sound damning, what Oxfam omits is crucial: Hamas has systematically stolen aid, turned civilian areas into weapons depots, and even fired rockets from UN schools. These realities are either downplayed or erased from NGO reports.

This selective framing is not new. Oxfam’s 2014 report, Cease Failure, made sweeping condemnations of Israel while barely mentioning Hamas rocket fire or the terror tunnels that threatened Israeli families in Sderot and Ashkelon. By removing key context, Oxfam transformed a complex war into a simple morality play where Israel was cast as the villain.

The Watchdogs Respond

Independent monitors have called out these double standards. NGO Monitor, which analyzes human rights organizations, noted that Amnesty’s March 2025 report accusing the European Union of “complicity in genocide” was riddled with “misrepresentations, omissions, and a selective application of international law.”

In other words, these organizations are not simply misinformed, they are actively shaping narratives that delegitimize Israel’s right to defend itself.

A Look Back at History

History provides perspective. When the Allied forces bombed Dresden in February 1945, up to 35,000 civilians were killed. The action was seen within the context of total war against Nazi Germany, not as a war crime. After the attacks of September 11, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Yet global discourse at the time emphasized the US right to self-defense against terrorism — not accusations of genocide.

But Israel, facing existential threats on multiple borders, is treated differently. The same moral logic that is applied to America and Europe is denied to the Jewish State.

Israel’s Ethical Conduct in War

Unlike its adversaries, Israel has taken extraordinary measures to protect civilian lives.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deploy tactics almost unheard of in modern warfare: “roof-knocking” (dropping non-lethal devices on buildings to warn civilians), sending text alerts, distributing maps of humanitarian corridors, and even pausing operations to allow aid trucks to enter Gaza.

Compare this to Hamas, whose leaders openly boast about using human shields. Hamas military commander Fathi Hammad once declared: “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry … This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen.”

Hamas has vowed to repeat Oct. 7 “over and over” until Israel is destroyed.

But no NGO report from Amnesty or Oxfam highlights this with the same intensity they reserve for Israel.

The Right to Exist Is Not Optional

The Dutch proverb says: “Schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest” — let the shoemaker stick to his trade.

Humanitarian groups should focus on saving lives, not rewriting history or enabling propaganda. By ignoring terrorism, downplaying hostage-taking, and erasing Israeli suffering, they betray their own missions.

Israel is not waging an elective war; it is fighting for survival in a hostile region. To condemn the Jewish State for defending its citizens while minimizing the atrocities of Hamas is not humanitarian advocacy, it is moral inversion.

The right of Israel to exist, and to defend that existence, is not negotiable.

Sabine Sterk in the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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