On June 25, 2024, a man named Fadi al-Waddiya was killed by a strike in Gaza. Doctors Without Borders immediately claimed him as their own. He was “a medic, a physiotherapist, and a father of three children.” He was just trying to help people, and Israel “assassinated” him.
“This attack is yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and health care workers in Gaza,” the group, also known by its French acronym MSF, thundered. Waddiya was killed “while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza.”
Except Waddiya was the deputy head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s manufacturing unit. Israel posted about Waddiya’s less-than-humanitarian day job. MSF was unmoved. So Israel provided evidence to the group, which said it “had no prior knowledge of Al-Wadiya’s alleged involvement in military activities” and “would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity.” It demanded “full transparency.”
This week, Palestinian Islamic Jihad included Waddiya on a list of commanders killed during the war. There’s no reason anymore to pretend, nor does PIJ have any incentive to continue protecting Doctors Without Borders’ reputation.
There is added importance to this story. After the cease-fire, Israel moved to tighten vetting requirements for NGOs seeking to continue operating in Gaza. Considering recent history, MSF should have welcomed the regulations in the interest of “full transparency,” not to mention the safety and security of the actual civilian doctors who work for the group. A simple “thank you” would have sufficed.
Even if some of these NGOs (tellingly) opposed having to clear their employees in a war zone, surely they understood why it was a reasonable request.
Not MSF, which denounced transparency as a “cynical and calculated attempt to prevent organizations from providing services.”
Israel refused to back down. So did MSF: “Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) will not share a list of its Palestinian and international staff with Israeli authorities as part of the registration process to work in Gaza and the West Bank. This decision comes after many months of unsuccessful engagement with Israeli authorities, and in the absence of securing assurances to ensure the safety of our staff and the independent management of our operations.”
Israel still wouldn’t back down, so MSF began negotiating a possible compromise ahead of the March 1 deadline to comply with the vetting rules.
At this point, objections to transparency are indefensible. Ironically, MSF has been making this argument for the Israelis by insisting it had no idea Waddiya was who Israel said he was. If we are to believe that, then Israel has no choice but to take the vetting out of MSF’s hands. The organization says it cannot tell the difference between a civilian and a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander when hiring.
Israel’s position here is overly generous. An NGO that is, by its own implicit acknowledgement, incapable of vetting for terrorists should not be operating in a war zone, full stop. Instead of immediately banning MSF, the Israeli government is volunteering to do MSF’s vetting work for it.
MSF should jump at the chance. After all, Israel is undeniably more reliable in its vetting than is MSF or any other NGO.
And that is precisely why MSF and its defenders have refused to take the deal: It would be tantamount to admitting that Israel’s information is far more likely to be accurate than anybody else’s. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example, can’t seem to tell terrorists from civilians either. And we’ve known nearly from the beginning of the war that the UN agencies operating in Gaza were practically subsidiaries of Hamas.
Admitting that Israel is more reliable a source than anyone else in the theater would also remind the public how much the media have smeared the IDF with false allegations and false reporting—to say nothing of the made-up casualty figures journalistic institutions have run for over two years. And it would suggest that perhaps the entire narrative of the wider conflict has been misleading.
No, the world’s NGO-media complex would rather put untold lives in danger than swallow its pride and admit that the credibility of Israel, and only of Israel, remains intact.
