Neutrality And A Four Letter Word

 The International Committee of the Red Cross has broken a tradition of neutrality which has been at the core of it's identity for 76 years. Any issue that has moved this great and much admired organisation to gamble with it's very legitimacy must clearly  be an issue it believes more important or as important as that very legitimacy.  The ICRC has spoken out over the denial as it sees it of a people’s human rights. 

Still it is very curious development, after all, it would be hard to think of any conflict in the many decades since the organisations founding that hasn't affected people’s human rights.

 Take Europe's most recent war in former Yugoslavia. Mass deportations of whole populations occurred and genocide by Serbs against Muslims and Croats against Serbs took place. The Red Cross remained neutral, realising that it could only carry out it's often vital work if all sides saw it as only concerned with the suffering of victims of war rather than the causes the combatants espoused. 

Or take Africa. It is really rather hard to know where to begin in that particular continent and it's plethora of wars and slaughters since the founding of the ICRC. Names like Uganda, Biafra, Zimbabwe, Sudan, South Africa and of course Rwanda come to mind. Then there was Pol Pot and the Vietnamese Boat people and countless other human rights obscenities. The Red Cross maintained a silence over the rights and wrongs of opposing sides and with that mandate, got on with it's work. 

So what has caused it to change it's underlying and defining principal now? That answer is a four letter word, Jews.

 The Beginnings of the Red Cross go back to the Nineteenth Century but a universal declaration of principles was adopted in 1928.

 Under a section on it's web site that appeared the same day that the ICRC breached it's own principles it says. 

“The meaning of the principle of neutrality” 

In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature. 

The ICRC makes it quite clear why that neutrality is so important. Without it doors to governments and prisons would close on them. Simply, they would not be able to carry out the noble ambitions and aims which the organisation was set up for.

 Again on their Web Page the ICRC clarifies it's position even further.

 "Neutrality implies standing apart at all times from political, religious or any other controversies in which the Red Cross or Red Crescent, were it to take a position, would lose the trust of one segment of the population and thus be unable to continue its activities….

In other words, neutrality is a state of mind, an attitude which must guide every step taken by the Movement's components."

 And in a specific section headed, "The specific neutrality of the ICRC"

 "For the ICRC, neutrality has a specific meaning, as indicated in the Movement's Statutes. To discharge the mandate conferred on it by the States party to the Geneva Conventions and to take the humanitarian initiatives which are part of its role as a neutral intermediary, the ICRC must remain independent." 

All of that history and all of those principals were thrown away as of the eighteenth of February 2004. The ICRC issued a statement about the conflict in the Middle East. 

"The ICRC is increasingly concerned about the humanitarian impact of the West Bank Barrier on many Palestinians living in occupied territory..." 

The full statement is written in very careful language and limits it's condemnation to areas where the Security wall strays beyond the so called "Green line." It also stressed Israel's right to defend itself.

 Still the BBC on Radio 4’s Today Programme called this "A break with tradition." The Times said, “The Red Cross has abandoned it’s traditional studied neutrality”

 It can hardly be coincidental that the press release The ICRC's comments come just days before a hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the legality of the controversial barrier. 

Israel says it rejects the court's authority to hold hearings on the barrier. 

Still this statement is an abandonment of the ICRC's own basic principals. The ICRC can never again pretend to be neutral. Jews may ask themselves was it ever?

 The Swiss based organisation is in fact an amalgamation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

 For decades, the ICRC has consistently refused Israel's attempts to join the ICRC. The ICRC refuses to recognise Israel's' Magen David Adom, Red Star of David as a symbol designating a humanitarian organisation. There are of course many benefits that could accrue from such recognition and inclusion along side other bodies that perform identical tasks for identical reasons, not least in a battle zone. 

The Red Cross had never been able to  live up to it's noble and humanitarian image when the four letter word, Jews emerges. That is an old wound and one about which the Red Cross is very well aware.

 The performance of the Red Cross during the Holocaust has left an indelible stain on the reputation of the organisation.

A report on the visit of an IRC delegate to Auschwitz in September, 1944 pointed out that internees were permitted to receive packages and that "rumours" of gas chambers could not be verified.All the Allied Governments knew of the extermination of Europe's Jews in Auschwitz and elsewhere. Britain's House of Commons observed a minutes silence where MPs stood to honour those being killed by the Nazi genocide machine. How then could the Red Cross inspect Concentration camps and be unable to verify their purpose? 

Former SS-Untersturmfuehrer Dr. Hans Münch explained in his Testimony at the International Nuremberg Trial (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. VIII, p.313-321)

 "I repeatedly witnessed guided tours of civilians and also of commissions of the Red Cross and other parties within the camp, and I was able to ascertain that the camp leadership arranged it masterfully to conduct these guided tours in such a way that the people being guided around did not see anything about inhuman treatment. The main camp was shown only and in this main camp there were so-called show blocks, particularly block 13, that were especially prepared for such guided tours and that were equipped like a normal soldier's barracks with beds that had sheets on them, and well-functioning washrooms."

 But the timetables of the trains bringing the children, their parents and grandparents to Auschwitz had been smuggled to the Allies. The activates within the camps was known (The Allies bombed an armaments factory in Auschwitz, but not the Gas Chambers) The Red Cross knew what was being reported about the Final Solution. 

Picture a police inspector arriving at an address because he has received a reliable tip- off that murder has taken place. The suspect allows the inspector in, but limits his access to one room of the house only. The Inspector leaves and reports that he found no evidence that murder has taken place!

 Few Jews doubt that repeated inspections provoked no reaction from the Red Cross because they were content to be shown sanitised versions of Hell. A conclusion that Red Cross Inspectors saw nothing that could "verify" claims of the final solution could only be reached by those who allowed themselves to be made blind.

 I returned a few days ago from Belfast where I spoke to the tiny Jewish community and Broadcast on BBC Radio 2. I passed through areas of the city where a wall separates the warring communities. It is about the same size as the one separating the warring sides in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Remember this wall has upset the ICRC more than any other incident in human suffering since it’s founding.

 There are other such areas and other such walls. The statistics of the Government of Northern Ireland designates an area as being “Segregated” if more than 90% of the population belong to one of the two warring communities, Catholic and Protestant.

In Belfast 98% of people living in Council estates live in segregated ones, that is, almost everyone lives in a segregated area. The hyperbolically named “Troubles” in reality a civil war, have done their job well. One commentator refers to this as “Benign Apartheid.” The walls keep the sides apart and enjoy a special name in Ulster, they are called “Peace Walls”

 The walls cannot be taken down. The communities do not want them taken down. The communities actually want more “Peace Walls” built!

They keep apart two peoples who are still, in very many respects, locked in conflict.

There is no doubt though that such walls cause hardships and problems to people living in their shadows. The ICRC has not of course issued statements condemning British Governments for having built or maintained them.

 Can anything be done? I doubt it.  The Anglo-Jewish structures for dealing with such matters are ineffectual and timid. Perhaps in America where equivalent organisations defend the Jewish community much more aggressively we might see the ICRC explaining itself in Court Rooms. I would not be surprised if this shift in "Neutrality" did not offend against the ICRC's legal definition in regards to Charity status for example.

 I must emphasise that I am neither an Israeli or a spokesperson for the Israeli government. I am just a Jew who is sick and sickened by the fact that the Red Cross has such difficulty in dealing fairly and impartially whenever they have anything to do with that four letter word, Jews.