The Red Cross has had a difficult time over the last decade or so as questions concerning its accounting procedures have lingered. Now, it is under scrutiny again over its handling of certain aspects of the Israel and Hamas conflict.

Ron and Simona are the parents of Doron Steinbrecher. Doron was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, under terrifying circumstances. On that day, Ron and Simona saw terrorists on their way to the area where Doron lived. Their daughter called them, but the call was suddenly dropped. Her last voicemail to her parents was saying, "they caught me, they caught me, they caught me."

Yesterday it was reported by the Jerusalem Post that Doron needs medication that, until her kidnapping, she took on a daily basis. Earlier in the week, Her parents were invited to a meeting with the Red Cross, which they believed would finally transfer her medication. Instead, they were lectured by representatives there and were told “think about the Palestinian side, It’s hard for the Palestinians, they’re being bombed.”

Simona was shocked by the callousness of the response saying “we left there as we entered, without new information, without something new, and with disappointment.”

This isn’t the first incident of poor treatment by the Red Cross in these circumstances. Elma Avraham is an 84-year-old woman who was freed during the ceasefire. Her family told Israeli media that the Red Cross had refused to bring Avraham the medication she needed during her captivity. Avraham was reportedly rushed to the hospital in critical condition immediately after she was released but, fortunately, she has improved since then. However, after Avraham was airlifted to the hospital, a relative said that he had tried to hand a Red Cross medic her medication to give her, but that he refused to accept it, saying it was against their protocols.

Dr. Nadav Davidovitch, who treated Avraham after her release, described a similar situation in The Jerusalem Post.

"We were in meetings with the Red Cross and asked them to make every effort to bring the medications to her, because some hostages are just dying. From a medical and nursing standpoint, what we witnessed is unlawful neglect."

The Red Cross and Red Crescent are part of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC has been criticized in the past for not practicing the neutrality that it professes.

Approximately three weeks after the attack, 1,200 lawyers across the world signed a letter written by the Israeli human rights group Shurat HaDin, condemning the Red Cross for not doing enough to help the hostages. The attorneys accused the organization of repeating the mistakes of indifference and inaction that it admitted to having made during the Holocaust.   

Allegations of bias against the ICRC go back decades. The Republican Policy Committee of the US Senate issued a report in the early 2000's accusing the ICRC of engaging in activism, in violation of its stated founding core principles of impartiality and neutrality.

It even went as far as alleging that the ICRC attempts to "reinterpret and expand international law so as to afford terrorists and insurgents the same rights and privileges as military personnel of States Party to the Geneva Conventions," and "lobby for arms control issues that are not within the organization's mandate."

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the organization gathered $500 million in donations. To date, it is still one of the most successful campaigns in history. Six years later, in 2016, following a nearly year-long investigation by Senator Chuck Grassley’s office, the report to the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees found that the charity spent $125 million, or a full 25 percent of the donations it received for earthquake relief and recovery efforts, on fundraising and management, a contingency fund, and "program costs," even though the organization repeatedly has stated that nine out of every ten dollars it receives in donations are spent on programs. 

NPR/ProPublica also found that nonprofit organizations working on the ground in Haiti that received funds from the Red Cross spent as much as 11 percent of those funds on internal overhead costs. As a result of a "complex, yet inaccurate" accounting system, the report notes, the Red Cross doesn't know how much it spent on each project in Haiti.

Accompanied by nearly three hundred pages of supporting documents, the report also found that top Red Cross officials stonewalled Congressional investigators and released incomplete information about the organization's activities in the impoverished country. They have insisted, for example, that $70 million spent on "program expenses" included funds to oversee and evaluate its Haiti projects, yet Grassley's office found that the charity "is unable to provide any financial evidence that oversight activities in fact occurred." 

There are many terms that can be used to describe the Red Cross. Unfortunately, "caring," "compassionate," and "trustworthy" aren’t any of them. The real shame here is that so many people will continue to be fooled by the front they present, while behind the scenes the exact opposite is true.

In 2021, the American Red Cross (ARC) raised $3.1 billion with most revenue ($2.1 billion) coming from the sale of biomedical services (i.e., blood and plasma collected through donations and sold), with the remaining revenue obtained primarily through contributions, gifts, and grants totaling $1 billion, including $170 million from the government.

Expenses totaled $2.8 billion, with the largest expense reported to be compensation (salaries, pension, benefits, and payroll taxes). 17,918 employees received $1.353 billion, or an average compensation of $76,000. The 15 most highly compensated employees were reported to be:

• $781,120:  Clifford Holtz, Chief Operating Officer
• $751,789:  Chis Hrouda, President, Biomedical Services
• $723,696:  Shaun Gilmore, Chief Transformation Officer
• $640,483:  Gail McGovern, President and CEO
• $629,954:  Brian Rhoa, CFO
• $535,518:  Paul Sullivan, SVP, Donor Services
• $491,333:  Phyllis Harris, General Counsel
• $488,883:  Melissa Hurst, Chief HR Officer
• $468,179:  Don Herring, Chief Development Officer
• $451,121:  Jack McMaster, President, Training Services
• $444,692:  Peter Giamalva, SVP, Biomedical Sales and Marketing
• $409,434:  Pampee Young, Chief Medical Officer
• $408,920:  Ronnie Strickland, CIO
• $407,120:  Harvey Johnson, President, Humanitarian Services
• $326,631:  Jennifer Hawkins, Corp Secretary and Chief of Staff

So, as you can see, no one is hurting at the Red Cross, except those that are hoping for some care, compassion and legitimate help.