U.S. Senate leaders condemn the participation of the Red Cross in the public displays orchestrated by the terrorist organization.

By David Isaac, JNS

Although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) previously issued a plaintive call for hostage releases to be carried out in a “dignified manner” following criticism from U.S. Senate leaders over its participation in Hamas’s handover ceremonies, the ICRC still took part in Thursday’s exhibition involving the transfer of four dead bodies.

While Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the ICRC had refused to cooperate in the ceremony, almost leading to a “blowup,” Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based International Legal Forum, said that report wasn’t accurate.

“Apart from some timid request by the ICRC for a ‘private, dignified handover of hostages’, today’s release again descended into an obscene and macabre propaganda display, in which a Red Cross representative even joined a masked Hamas terrorist on stage, alongside the coffins of the four murdered hostages,” he told JNS.

Ostrovsky noted: “Under the Geneva Conventions, for which the ICRC serves as guardian, ‘humiliating and degrading treatment,’ such as what Hamas is doing in parading the hostages on stage, including the murdered captives, is considered a gross violation of international law and a war crime.”

A Red Cross official on stage during the signing “ceremony” to release the bodies of four Israeli hostages, Feb. 20, 2025. Credit: Quds News Network.

The ICRC, in a statement on Wednesday, urged “those with the responsibility and the authority over these releases, and those with influence on them, to ensure that they are conducted with privacy, respect, and care.”

Hamas prisoner ceremonies, in which hostages are presented to braying Gazan crowds and forced to thank their tormentors, have been denounced by Israeli and U.S. leaders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the crowds of Gazans who mobbed three Israelis during a Jan. 30 release.

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed shock at the emaciated condition of three others released on Feb. 8. American lawmakers condemned the ICRC for its part in the ceremonies, saying the agency risked jeopardizing its image as an unbiased actor. (The Red Cross claims two of its seven principles are “impartiality” and “neutrality.”)

U.S. Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Free Beacon website on Wednesday, “Participating in Hamas’s propaganda ceremonies definitely calls into question their supposed neutrality. Seems like the ICRC is more concerned about their public image than actually fulfilling their mission to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.”

The Free Beacon featured a screenshot from the Feb. 8 ceremony of a Red Cross official, Nour Khadam, shaking hands with a Hamas terrorist as another ICRC official, Stephanie Eller, looked on. A senior Senate adviser told the Free Beacon, “It’s shameful that the Red Cross is enabling propaganda of terrorists after they took no action over the last year to even visit the hostages.

“Congress needs to reassess the U.S. relationship and stop any funding for any groups that have aided and abetted Hamas atrocities,” the adviser added.

ICRC official Nour Khadam shakes hands with a Hamas member as ICRC official Stephanie Eller stands in the background during a hostage transfer ceremony in Khan Yunis, the Gaza Strip, Feb. 8, 2025. Credit: Screenshot via The Washington Free Beacon.

From the war’s start, Israelis have condemned the ICRC for failing to visit any of the hostages to ensure they received basic food and medicine.

Israeli anger intensified as stories emerged of torture, sexual abuse, and lack of food and medical care. That anger spilled over into legal action as Israelis demanded that the international organization be held accountable.

In December 2023, the Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin—Israel Law Center filed a 10 million-shekel ($2.8 million) lawsuit against the ICRC on behalf of 24 plaintiffs, including released captives and hostages’ families.

“We alleged that the ICRC has breached its moral and legal duty to protect the wellbeing, health and rights of the Israelis being held by the terrorist Hamas organization,” Shurat HaDin said at the time.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), introduced a bill on March 5, 2024, during the last session of the U.S. Congress that would allow U.S. citizens who are victims of terror to sue international organizations that support Hamas and other such groups.

The legislation was mainly aimed at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and the World Health Organization, but was written broadly enough to include nonprofits like the Red Cross, the Free Beacon reported.

“The left-wing NGO ecosystem is deeply complicit in Hamas’s terrorism and torture of hostages,” Cruz told the Free Beacon. “Bizarrely, these organizations enjoy more immunity from lawsuits than even sovereign countries.” Cruz intends to introduce the bill again in the current Congress.

Ostrovsky told JNS, “Senator Cruz should be applauded for seeking to change existing legislation, allowing victims of terror, including families of American hostages, to sue the Red Cross, to hold them accountable for their wholesale abrogation of duty and collaboration with Hamas.”

ICRC official seen on stage in Khan Yunis, the Gaza Strip, during the Hamas ceremony on Feb. 20, 2025. Credit: Quds News Network.

The ICRC enjoys a protected status as an international organization, similar to the U.N., he explained. It insists this is critical for it to engage with proscribed terrorist groups in combat zones “without fear of repercussion or liability.”

While it sounds laudable in principle, in practice, the Red Cross “utterly failed” in its mission in Gaza to provide succor for the victims, not visiting a single hostage, among them U.S. citizens, Ostrovsky said, “instead collaborating with Hamas in these obscene release spectacles.”

Exposing the Red Cross to liability isn’t the only tool in the U.S.’s arsenal, he added, given the Trump administration’s determination to cut government waste and abuse of funds.

Noting Trump’s Executive Order on his first day in office prohibiting foreign aid from being disbursed in a way not aligned with U.S. foreign policy, Ostrovsky said, “Aiding and abetting Hamas … is not only not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the president of the United States, but runs entirely counter to it.”

Ostrovsky recommended defunding the ICRC. He also called for sanctions against the ICRC and its senior leadership, similar to what the U.S. has done against the International Criminal Court and its Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

“Enough is enough. The Red Cross, once a storied humanitarian organization, has betrayed its mission and any pretext of neutrality, by siding with Hamas, and must be held accountable,” Ostrovsky said.