Hamas hands over Israeli captives to the custody of the International Red Cross in Rafah, November 2023. (Flash90)
According to the Geneva Convention, the role of the Red Cross in a war zone is to visit the hostages, deliver medical supplies, and bring updates to families.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
In an address to a Knesset hearing Monday attended by families of hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described how an International Red Cross Representative told him “no” when he asked her to deliver crucial medicine to hostages.
“I met with the Red Cross; I handed over a box of medicine for some of the hostages pictured here. Some of them really need it.”
He continued, “I told a representative to take this box to Rafah; she said no. It was a difficult conversation.”
When describing the difficulties with the Red Cross and the idea that freeing the hostages would take time, some members of hostage families yelled, “Now!” while Netanyahu was speaking.
“We are sparing no effort, both seen and hidden, to bring all of the hostages home,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s account of the Red Cross flatly refusing to deliver medicine and aid to hostages is consistent with testimonies by hostage families who recount similar interactions with the humanitarian organization.
After 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham was released in late November, she was in critically ill condition after not having received needed medication during the entire period of her captivity.
She has since pulled through, though she had to be flown by helicopter from Gaza to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba and for days was fighting for her life in critical condition.
Elma Avraham’s son, Uri Rawitz, gathered his mother’s medications and tried to take them to the Red Cross so they could be administered to his mother.
The Red Cross workers said, “No, we can’t do anything.”
“We need to yell at the Red Cross,” Elma Avraham’s daughter Tal Amano said, “Why are they there if they don’t do anything?”
According to the Geneva Convention, the role of the Red Cross in a war zone is to visit the hostages, deliver medical supplies, and bring updates to families.
Regarding the Red Cross, Amano said, “They abandoned my mother from a health perspective…She was abandoned twice, once on October 7 and a second time by all the organizations that should have saved her and prevented her condition.”
Sources close to Netanyahu separately denied that the reported conversation occurred.
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