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Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is an organization that most assume is focused on delivering much needed aid and supplies in harsh environments without bias or favor. However, one of the organization’s former leaders is criticizing how MSF has handled the situation in Gaza, even going so far as to say that its members have acted as “accomplices of Hamas.”
Alain Destexhe, who worked as a doctor with MSF in the 1980s before going on to serve as the group’s secretary general in the 1990s, told Fox News Digital that the organization moved away from its impartial, humanitarian roots.
“Well, it would have been impossible at the time when I was secretary general of MSF to be as biased as MSF — Doctors Without Borders — is now in Gaza. We were defining ourselves as a neutral, impartial and humanitarian organization,” Destexhe told Fox News Digital. “I think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel.”
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“Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization,” he later added.
On Oct. 12, 2023, less than a week after Hamas carried out its brutal massacre and took more than 250 people hostage, MSF condemned the slaughter but also called for an end to Israel’s actions in Gaza, making no mention of the hostages.
“Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is horrified by the brutal mass killing of civilians perpetrated by Hamas, and by the massive attacks on Gaza, Palestine, now being pursued by Israel,” the organization wrote. “MSF calls for an immediate cessation to the indiscriminate bloodshed, and the establishment of safe spaces and safe passage for people to reach them as a matter of urgency.”
Beyond the organization’s condemnation of both the massacre and Israeli actions, Destexhe uncovered several social media posts on accounts allegedly belonging to MSF staffers appearing to celebrate the Oct. 7 massacre. Destexhe explained to Fox News Digital that much of MSF’s staff in the Gaza Strip are Palestinians, not foreign workers.
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Destexhe acknowledged that in order to operate in Gaza, MSF has to work with Hamas, as the terror group has control over “all civil society and all the medical facilities” in the enclave. He said operating alone would have been impossible during his tenure as secretary general and that the organization would have said it could not work with “a totalitarian and terrorist organization.”
“The only thing that MSF can do is to say, ‘no, we don’t want to be part of this. We have to quit Gaza. And we don’t want to become accomplices with a terrorist organization like Hamas,'” Destexhe told Fox News Digital.
MSF has faced scrutiny over its actions and statements regarding the situation in Gaza.
Earlier this year, MSF launched ads against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israel-backed organization. MSF accused GHF of partaking in “systemized violence.”
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay called MSF’s accusations “false and disgraceful.” He said the organization was amplifying misinformation.
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Last month, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., requested that Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate MSF under the Anti-Terrorism Act. In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Stefanik claimed MSF’s attacks on GHF “mirror propaganda continuously pushed by Hamas and threaten to undermine the only large-scale humanitarian food operation currently working in Gaza.”
Destexhe also noted in his interview with Fox News Digital that MSF was echoing the sentiments and statistics of the Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas. This included the swift condemnation of a blast that occurred at al-Ahali Hospital.
While it was later discovered that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired, MSF neither corrected nor deleted its condemnation, which is still available on X but has a community note.
“MSF is lying, MSF is partial, MS is biased, and MSF are accomplices of Hamas,” Destexhe said.
Destexhe believes the solution to MSF’s bias problem in Gaza is for the organization to leave the enclave.
“If MSF withdraws, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is not going to change,” he said.
Destexhe said he thinks that without MSF in Gaza, there would still be doctors attending to patients in need and that the organization does not “have any added value” in the area.
He recalled earlier moments when MSF prioritized ethics over presence, such as when it pulled out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a decision made during his tenure as secretary general.
In 1994, during the Rwandan genocide, part of the organization made the choice to leave, as they thought staying would only legitimize the violence that was taking place.
An MSF document explains that the organization “was forced to choose between continuing to work in the camps, thereby further strengthening the power of the génocidaires over the refugees or withdrawing from the camps and leaving a population in distress.”
Ultimately, the French section of the organization withdrew in late 1994, while the Dutch, Belgian and Spanish sections chose to remain. However, MSF Belgium and MSF Holland were forced to end their programs in July 1995.
Fox News Digital reached out to MSF for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News Digital’s Beth Bailey contributed to this report.
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