Who’s Behind the Report Accusing Doctors Without Borders of Anti‑Israel Activism?

On a gray morning in late February, a 47‑page dossier began circulating through diplomatic inboxes in Brussels and Washington. Its charge landed with a thud: Doctors Without Borders — Médecins Sans Frontières, the Nobel Peace Prize‑winning medical humanitarian group — had crossed a line from emergency medicine into “anti‑Israel political advocacy.” The report urged governments and donors to reconsider their support. Within days, the accusation ricocheted across social media and into parliamentary questions. Few stopped to ask the most basic question. Who wrote this — and why now?

The Report That Lit the Fuse

The document, titled “Doctors Without Borders: Medical Aid or Political Activism?”, was published by NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem‑based research group founded in 2001 that describes its mission as “promoting transparency and accountability of NGOs claiming to advance human rights.” The report catalogs public statements by MSF officials since October 2023, alleging a pattern of “delegitimization rhetoric” toward Israel, selective condemnation of Israeli military actions in Gaza, and cooperation with what it calls “politicized UN mechanisms.”

The language is unapologetically blunt. MSF, the report claims, “has abandoned neutrality in favor of ideological warfare,” a phrase that appeared verbatim in at least six op‑eds and parliamentary briefings citing the document between February and March 2025.

Timing matters. The report dropped four months after MSF released casualty data from Gaza showing over 20,000 trauma surgeries performed by its teams between October 2023 and January 2025, and just weeks after MSF called for an independent investigation into the bombing of medical facilities — an investigation Israel rejected as “biased.”

Who Is NGO Monitor, Really?

NGO Monitor operates as a project of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, an Israeli think tank affiliated with the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Its funding disclosures list private donors in Israel, Europe, and North America, though it does not publish a comprehensive donor registry. According to Israel’s Registrar of Non‑Profits, the organization reported an annual budget of approximately 7.6 million shekels ($2.05 million) in 2023.

The group’s leadership includes former Israeli diplomats and legal scholars. Its founder and president, Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, has testified before the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, arguing that international NGOs exert “unaccountable political power” under the banner of human rights.

None of this disqualifies NGO Monitor’s research. But context sharpens the picture. Since 2015, NGO Monitor has published more than 30 reports targeting MSF, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch — all organizations that have accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law. The framing rarely changes; the targets do.

Scrutinizing the Evidence

The report’s core evidence falls into three buckets:

• Public Statements: Quotes from MSF press releases, interviews, and social media posts condemning Israeli military actions.
• Advocacy Activities: MSF participation in UN Security Council briefings and coordination with WHO and OCHA.
• Operational Choices: Decisions to suspend or withdraw teams from certain Israeli‑approved humanitarian corridors due to security concerns.

Take one frequently cited example. The report highlights an MSF statement from December 2024 accusing Israel of conducting “collective punishment” in Gaza — language NGO Monitor calls “legal warfare terminology.”

What the report omits: the same phrase appears in International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) briefings and in a January 2024 statement by UN Secretary‑General António Guterres. Singling out MSF for language widely used in humanitarian law circles raises questions about selective outrage.

Data handling also deserves scrutiny. NGO Monitor tallies 14 critical statements about Israel by MSF between October 2023 and February 2025. It does not count MSF’s nine statements condemning Hamas’ October 7 attacks, nor its repeated calls for the release of Israeli hostages — all easily searchable on MSF’s website.

What MSF Says — On the Record

MSF rarely responds to watchdog reports. This time, it did.

In a written statement provided to me on March 12, 2026, Dr. Christos Christou, International President of MSF, rejected the accusation outright:

“Our mandate is medical and humanitarian. Speaking publicly about the conditions our patients endure — including bombardment of hospitals and denial of aid — is not activism. It is testimony.”

Christou pointed to MSF’s Charter of Principles, adopted in 1971 and reaffirmed after the organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, which commits MSF to “témoignage” — bearing witness when silence would endanger lives.

MSF also shared internal data: since October 2023, the organization has treated over 8,500 patients with blast injuries, performed 1,200 emergency cesarean sections, and lost 11 staff members in Gaza. “Neutrality does not mean silence in the face of mass casualty events,” the statement added.

The Political Stakes

Why does this matter beyond an NGO spat?

Because MSF’s credibility influences policy. The organization receives approximately 35% of its €2.4 billion annual budget from institutional donors, including the EU, Germany, France, and the United States. Reports questioning its neutrality land directly on the desks of budget committees.

In March 2025, a group of 27 members of the European Parliament cited NGO Monitor’s findings while calling for a review of EU funding to MSF. No funds were suspended, but the signal was clear: narrative pressure can translate into political risk.

Israel’s government has not officially endorsed the report, but senior officials have echoed its themes. A January 2025 briefing by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused “certain medical NGOs” of “selective morality.” The phrase appeared again — almost verbatim — in NGO Monitor’s executive summary.

A Pattern, Not an Anomaly

This is not the first time humanitarian groups have faced this playbook. In 2020, NGO Monitor published a similar report on Save the Children, alleging ties to Palestinian political actors. An independent audit commissioned by Save the Children later found no evidence supporting the claim. The allegations, however, lived on in headlines long after the audit faded.

The strategy works because it exploits a tension at the heart of humanitarianism: the line between witnessing and advocacy. As conflicts become more polarized, that line narrows.

What Readers Should Watch For

When encountering reports like this, a few practical checks cut through the fog:

• Follow the funding trail: Tools like OpenSecrets Premium Research Platform or NGOsource Profiles help map institutional relationships that rarely appear in press releases.
• Cross‑reference language: Use databases such as LexisNexis Media Analytics to see whether criticized phrases appear elsewhere — or only when certain actors use them.

• Track omissions: Software like Zotero with the Citation Counts plugin makes it easier to spot selective sourcing across long reports.

These tools won’t tell you who’s right. They will tell you who’s being selective.

The Bigger Question

At its core, the fight over this report asks a question that governments, donors, and journalists can’t dodge: when doctors describe what they see, who decides whether that testimony is medical evidence or political speech?

MSF’s surgeons don’t vote in parliaments. NGO Monitor’s analysts don’t suture wounds. Both claim the moral high ground. Only one works under fire.

The danger lies not in criticism — scrutiny keeps institutions honest — but in campaigns that blur critique with delegitimization. When that happens, the cost isn’t reputational. It’s measured in clinics that never open and patients who never make it to the operating table.

The report against MSF will continue to circulate. So will the war that prompted MSF to speak. The real test will be whether policymakers read beyond the accusations — and whether the rest of us learn to ask who benefits when humanitarian witnesses are put on trial.