By Irwin Loy
IN July, staff at the International Rescue Committee started noticing unusual changes to Gaza-related content on the aid group’s website.
An article about aid blockades had disappeared. Another, on the collapse of Gaza’s health system, was missing. And a popular explainer page was significantly altered in ways that seemed to reframe the narrative around Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
Why was the aid access page removed, a staff member asked on an internal messaging site.
Why have there been no public statements on Gaza in weeks, another staff member wondered.
The decisions, colleagues answered, were made by senior leadership.
Some IRC staff say it’s part of a pattern of unexplained self-censorship and top-down interference that has hurt the organisation’s response in Gaza, and driven a wedge between leadership and large parts of its frontline workforce.
As one example, they point to a high-traffic explainer page that was edited in early July with no reason given, staff said.
The changes appear to soft-pedal language around Israeli actions, spotlight Hamas, dim the focus on Palestinian deaths, and erase attribution for their killings.
“Airstrikes, fighting, and co-mingling of fighters with civilians are having a devastating impact,” the new version reads. “… there have been over 37,000 fatalities of Palestinians.”
“It is just very disheartening. It is obvious that there is something happening here that’s out of the norm.”
Comparing archived versions of the page shows that the IRC removed mention of Israeli responsibility for denying aid, and deleted all references to “Palestine” or “the occupied Palestinian territory”. The changes also soften references to the record number of aid workers killed in Gaza – linking the deaths to ”insecurity caused by the fighting” rather than the Israeli military. Mentions of “mass graves”, “starvation”, and “malnutrition” were also removed.
“It is just very disheartening,” said an IRC staff member. “It is obvious that there is something happening here that’s out of the norm.”
The staff member asked not to be named in order to speak more openly. Other aid workers also asked not to be named or quoted but shared details of internal discussions at the IRC and other organisations.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people since 7 October 2023. Analysts say famine is unfolding amid Israel’s “near-total blockade” of food supplies into northern Gaza, and the UN says Palestinian children have starved to death over the last year. On 21 November, judges at the International Criminal Court announced they had issued arrest warrants over alleged war crimes for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
Israel’s government says it’s responding to the 7 October Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people. Many say Israel’s siege of Gaza is blatantly disproportionate, and should be seen as part of decades of occupation, mass displacement, apartheid, destruction of infrastructure, and now targeted starvation that add up to a genocide in progress.
For the last year, most aid groups have struggled to balance stark facts and competing narratives with their conventional interpretations of humanitarian neutrality.
Internal frustrations about public messaging and double standards have rippled across UN agencies, government bodies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, and big NGOs like the IRC. They’ve often exposed underlying tensions between the international aid sector’s majority Global South workforce and its decision-makers, centred in the Global North.
These cracks have widened over the last year as Israel’s destruction and clearance of Gaza escalated.
IRC staffers who spoke to The New Humanitarian believe their organisation’s recent actions make it an outlier compared to other aid groups. They point to a range of examples, including:
- Public messaging that appears to soften language and remove or obscure attribution for Israeli actions. In some cases, such as the emphasis on “co-mingling”, the wording appears to mirror Israeli government and military talking points that blame high casualties on Hamas “co-mingling military assets among the civilian population”. In these cases, the language appears to go off script from approved communications guidelines.
- Long stretches of public silence on Gaza. For example, the IRC appears to have published zero statements or press releases on Gaza over a two-month stretch from mid-June to mid-August. It published at least 14 in April and May.
- A hesitancy to co-sign joint statements that other NGOs facing similar pressures have endorsed.
- Unusual interference from senior leadership throughout the Gaza response. An internal “learning exercise” – a routine IRC assessment meant to foster improvements – interviewed dozens of staff in the region and deployed to the Palestine response. “Decisions that would normally be field-based were frequently made outside the response team, and very often in HQ, sometimes by the IRC board or president,” the internal document stated.
In October, some 580 IRC staff signed their names to a letter criticising a ”muted response and biased language about the immense loss of life in Gaza”. The letter was addressed to President and CEO David Miliband, and written by “IRC Middle Eastern staff and allies”.
“Content related to Palestine is being edited by leadership outside of normal organisational protocols.”
“At a time when voices in the West increasingly dehumanise our communities, our silence regarding the atrocities committed by Israel is not merely felt – it is profoundly harmful,” the letter stated.
An August letter sent to senior leadership demanded explanations for why articles had been removed, and why the organisation’s public messages and policy briefings on Gaza seemed to have stopped at the time, or were withdrawn.
“Content related to Palestine is being edited by leadership outside of normal organisational protocols,” the letter stated.
An accompanying anonymous survey polled staff on their views on the IRC’s communications on Palestine.
“I feel like I am being forced to lie on behalf of the organisation,” one respondent said.
The New Humanitarian sent the IRC 12 questions about staff concerns, website changes, communications policies on Israel and Gaza, what goes into decisions behind endorsing joint statements, and its partnerships with other organisations. A statement sent in reply by an IRC representative did not address the questions.
“This crisis has been especially heavy on colleagues, many of whom have been directly impacted, and who are deeply committed to IRC’s mission,” the statement read. “We aim to foster an environment that encourages dialogue.”
Large sections of the response are identical to previous statements sent internally to staff and to The New Humanitarian last year.
The staff criticism is happening amid months of internal turmoil over a surprise budget shortfall triggered by rising costs, flat funding, and poor financial tracking. The IRC has cut jobs and trimmed programmes as it tries to balance the books for 2025 while reeling in a budget shortfall that reached at least $50 million in 2024.
Meanwhile, conditions and humanitarian access in Gaza continue to deteriorate: Almost no aid has entered northern Gaza in 40 days, the UN said this week. And Israel’s warfare has spiralled in Lebanon, with impacts spilling across the region.
A sector-wide issue
Internal strain over Gaza isn’t unique to the IRC. Staff at other aid agencies also describe tensions navigating the gulf between their principles and those of their organisations.
Staff at the World Food Programme and UNICEF, for example, confronted their leaders early on. Staff at various agencies, including the UN’s migration agency, IOM; the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR; the UN Development Programme; the International Labour Organization; and other bodies have also spoken up. Staff within the Red Cross movement, typically seen as the standard-bearers of old-school humanitarian neutrality, have questioned their organisation’s interpretations. So, we have staff at Save the Children, the Danish Refugee Council, and Médecins Sans Frontières, among others.
Many international humanitarian groups, especially organisations with a footprint in the United States, are facing growing internal pressure to tone down their messaging on Gaza in recent weeks, aid workers say – driven by perceptions of a heated political environment in the US.
But the IRC’s public stance is particularly cautious, aid workers at other organisations told The New Humanitarian.
“IRC needs to listen to staff when they say they are uncomfortable.”
They point to an apparent reluctance to sign on to joint statements with other humanitarian NGOs.
A September analysis and statement, for example, highlighted the Israeli government’s obstruction of aid. The IRC was not among the 15 signatories.
The IRC also held back from endorsing an October statement, signed by 19 groups, warning of a “dramatic escalation of [a] humanitarian catastrophe” in northern Gaza.
Aid groups have penned dozens of statements on Gaza in the last year. Reasons for not signing on can range from the mundane – rushed deadlines or long internal sign-off procedures – to the political. Statements that mention the International Court of Justice or Israel’s occupation of Palestine are seen as particular red lines, aid workers said.
The New Humanitarian asked the IRC to explain the decision-making behind signing on to statements. The organisation did not respond to the question directly.
“The IRC’s communications are written from the humanitarian perspective with a strict adherence to the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence – the needs of our clients supersede all others,” the emailed statement read.
Those lines are nearly identical to internal responses sent to IRC staff, including an email from Miliband replying to the August staff letter.
For now, IRC staff say their organisation’s public messaging continues to fluctuate between silence, hesitancy, and more strongly worded statements. More forceful recent statements that recognise Israeli actions sit alongside articles that downplay them, with little explanation for the discrepancy, staff say.
“I think many of us are absolutely baffled,” the IRC staff member told The New Humanitarian.
Meanwhile, internal IRC documents warn of a “continuing rift” between senior leadership and staff working on the Gaza response.
“Staff noted that persons who spoke out about their concerns with IRC’s actions/inactions were labelled as exaggerating and emotional,” the learning exercise review stated.
It continued: “IRC needs to listen to staff when they say they are uncomfortable. As one respondent noted, ‘We cannot take on more contexts like this unless we fundamentally shift. We are breaking people with this response.’”
Edited by Andrew Gully.
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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
