Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios

On October 7, 2023, the world witnessed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas terrorists stormed across the border, butchering families, burning homes, and taking hundreds of hostages, while Hezbollah joined in by launching rockets from Lebanon.

For most people, this was a day of horror. For the world’s leading humanitarian organizations, however, it became another opportunity to blame Israel.

The Selective Outrage of Humanitarian Groups

Instead of directing their moral outrage toward Hamas and Hezbollah, many NGOs chose to focus their fire on Israel.

Amnesty International, for instance, has published multiple reports accusing Israel of genocide. In its December 2024 publication, tellingly titled “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman,” Amnesty concluded: “Israel is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by killing members of the group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.”

Earlier in 2025, Amnesty doubled down, releasing a statement that Israel was “pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation as a weapon of war, which constitutes a form of genocide.”

Such sweeping accusations, leveled without context about Hamas’ role in starting the war, hoarding aid, building tunnels under hospitals, and deliberately embedding among civilians, reveal less about facts on the ground and more about political framing.

Oxfam’s Numbers Without Context

Oxfam, too, has amplified this one-sided narrative. In January 2025, it contributed to a survey of aid organizations, claiming that “89% of humanitarian groups report that Israel’s restrictions obstructed aid delivery, and 93% noted worsening conditions in Gaza.”

While the figures sound damning, what Oxfam omits is crucial: Hamas has systematically stolen aid, turned civilian areas into weapons depots, and even fired rockets from UN schools. These realities are either downplayed or erased from NGO reports.

This selective framing is not new. Oxfam’s 2014 report, Cease Failure, made sweeping condemnations of Israel while barely mentioning Hamas rocket fire or the terror tunnels that threatened Israeli families in Sderot and Ashkelon. By removing key context, Oxfam transformed a complex war into a simple morality play where Israel was cast as the villain.

The Watchdogs Respond

Independent monitors have called out these double standards. NGO Monitor, which analyzes human rights organizations, noted that Amnesty’s March 2025 report accusing the European Union of “complicity in genocide” was riddled with “misrepresentations, omissions, and a selective application of international law.”

In other words, these organizations are not simply misinformed, they are actively shaping narratives that delegitimize Israel’s right to defend itself.

A Look Back at History

History provides perspective. When the Allied forces bombed Dresden in February 1945, up to 35,000 civilians were killed. The action was seen within the context of total war against Nazi Germany, not as a war crime. After the attacks of September 11, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Yet global discourse at the time emphasized the US right to self-defense against terrorism — not accusations of genocide.

But Israel, facing existential threats on multiple borders, is treated differently. The same moral logic that is applied to America and Europe is denied to the Jewish State.

Israel’s Ethical Conduct in War

Unlike its adversaries, Israel has taken extraordinary measures to protect civilian lives.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deploy tactics almost unheard of in modern warfare: “roof-knocking” (dropping non-lethal devices on buildings to warn civilians), sending text alerts, distributing maps of humanitarian corridors, and even pausing operations to allow aid trucks to enter Gaza.

Compare this to Hamas, whose leaders openly boast about using human shields. Hamas military commander Fathi Hammad once declared: “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry … This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen.”

Hamas has vowed to repeat Oct. 7 “over and over” until Israel is destroyed.

But no NGO report from Amnesty or Oxfam highlights this with the same intensity they reserve for Israel.

The Right to Exist Is Not Optional

The Dutch proverb says: “Schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest” — let the shoemaker stick to his trade.

Humanitarian groups should focus on saving lives, not rewriting history or enabling propaganda. By ignoring terrorism, downplaying hostage-taking, and erasing Israeli suffering, they betray their own missions.

Israel is not waging an elective war; it is fighting for survival in a hostile region. To condemn the Jewish State for defending its citizens while minimizing the atrocities of Hamas is not humanitarian advocacy, it is moral inversion.

The right of Israel to exist, and to defend that existence, is not negotiable.

Sabine Sterk in the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.