Full Comment - Hate has corrupted the world’s biggest charities

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00:01:18.120 NGOs, non-governmental organizations, we often call them charities. They're supposed to be

00:01:23.140 the groups that, well, fill the gaps that governments don't fill. They are supposed to be

00:01:28.160 organizations that help people. But what if they don't? What if there are deep problems within

00:01:33.980 them? Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host,

00:01:38.020 and today we look at a new report that examines some of the biggest NGOs in the world. Their

00:01:43.580 names you've heard, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch,

00:01:49.460 the Red Cross, and more. Do they have an anti-Semitism problem? Well, a new report

00:01:54.740 from a group called 8 submits that, yes, they do.

00:01:57.960 Danielle Haas joins me now to discuss this.

00:02:00.560 Danielle, thanks very much for the time.

00:02:02.780 Thank you for having me.

00:02:04.440 What prompted this?

00:02:05.700 Why did your group decide, okay, we need to come forward

00:02:09.720 and report on groups that many people in Canada,

00:02:15.960 around the world, hold in very high esteem?

00:02:19.180 Well, I think it begins with who we are as a group.

00:02:21.780 Who We Are is a group comprised of and founded by professionals from within these NGOs.

00:02:28.480 So we all worked for these organizations plus more.

00:02:33.000 And we are obviously pro-rights and we are obviously pro-their principles.

00:02:38.120 But we had experienced over many years mission drift in various forms.

00:02:43.560 and particularly after October the 7th we saw a dramatic decline in principles and standards and

00:02:52.340 we were mindful and we were observing that there was actually no interest on the part of these

00:02:57.080 organizations to respond to concerns that were being raised and so we felt if we didn't bring

00:03:02.580 these out into the open as people deeply embedded within these organizations then there was a missed

00:03:08.960 opportunity for some real first-hand research and also first-hand evidence that's also included in

00:03:14.400 the report. Okay, so tell me about your background. Where did you start in the NGO world and where

00:03:20.620 were you when you decided, okay, this needs to change and we need to talk about it?

00:03:27.180 So I had come from a background in journalism and then I had spent some time in academia

00:03:32.120 and from that I went straight to Human Rights Watch where I was for 14 years and there were

00:03:39.560 definitely signs and problems along the way that I observed but there are many problems in

00:03:44.540 organizations and so you know one absorbs them or tries to deal with them and I certainly don't

00:03:51.500 think I would have done anything external about it had I not become aware that other people in

00:03:58.240 my organization were experiencing issues. The report focuses on Middle East work, but really

00:04:04.080 I was hearing problems coming out of other divisions too, in terms of ideology that was

00:04:08.660 beginning to affect their work. For example, the Africa division. And then what really happened

00:04:15.360 was I wrote an article after leaving Human Rights Watch in 2023, partly to send a flare. I was sure

00:04:21.620 that probably other organizations were problematic. And true enough, people began to respond and we

00:04:26.940 began to come together unofficially and now officially within this new initiative called

00:04:32.040 eight. Yeah, eight scrutiny, accountability, renewal. And the report is called Insiders

00:04:39.440 Speak NGO Antisemitism Failed Accountability and Their Impact on Social Cohesion. So

00:04:45.700 I think a lot of people are that haven't been paying attention are going to be shocked. There

00:04:51.900 There are still people that are shocked that UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is filled with people who are part of Hamas, not just support Hamas, but are part of Hamas.

00:05:04.340 How bad was it within groups like Human Rights Watch or you have heard, I mean, I listed them off at the beginning, Amnesty and groups like that that we think are there to call out abuses?

00:05:20.780 were they willing to call out abuses when it came to groups that most western governments consider

00:05:28.000 terrorists well i think what we're beginning to see is they'll call out some abuses some of the

00:05:34.200 time in some places um according to some politics so what we're seeing is the erosion of core

00:05:41.920 principles essentially within these organizations that are founded on the ideas of universalism

00:05:46.300 everyone, the same rights apply to everyone, or neutrality. And so we're beginning to see

00:05:52.680 some application to the Middle East, but not to other areas. Settler colonialism to Israel,

00:05:58.320 but not to America or Australia or Canada. We're seeing sort of cherry picking. And once you

00:06:07.720 do that, it's really the demise of organizations that rest on values, because theoretically,

00:06:13.340 you can absorb all sorts of changes in an organization, different people, different

00:06:18.540 backgrounds, different politics, if your principles hold strong, right? You can contain it all

00:06:23.000 if you keep tight with your principles. But what they did was really not stand up to growing

00:06:28.140 ideology as it began to take hold. And now it's really taken hold of them.

00:06:34.340 As I was reading your report and the coverage of this in National Post, and folks haven't read it,

00:06:40.020 I encourage you to go and read the piece

00:06:41.960 that was published in National Post the other day.

00:06:45.020 I don't want to make this a left-right issue or partisan,

00:06:51.560 but I was reminded of O'Sullivan's Law,

00:06:53.960 as I often have been when thinking of groups like Amnesty

00:06:56.780 that I used to admire and support.

00:06:59.780 And O'Sullivan's Law, coined by John O'Sullivan,

00:07:05.000 British columnist, former aide to Margaret Thatcher,

00:07:09.820 said, any organization that isn't explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.

00:07:16.040 What was part of your mission creep, the fact that they started to view things through a

00:07:22.100 left-wing, very progressive political lens? Instead of being the neutral group that's going

00:07:29.280 to stand up for rights, they decided, okay, well, we'll stand up for rights, but we have to look at

00:07:34.320 it through this particular political lens. Yeah, I think there are a number of reasons why this has

00:07:42.580 come to pass. And actually, there was a very good article in the UK Telegraph yesterday

00:07:46.500 by Nicole Lambert, which is about how amnesty lost its way. And I think generally what happened

00:07:52.860 is that these organizations grew too big, too powerful, too unscrutinized. And what we're

00:07:59.620 seeing as the inevitable result of unchecked power. I mean, we see arrogance, really,

00:08:06.980 even in their, you know, especially in their responses to even their own scandals. So in

00:08:12.460 response to our report, you see this very clearly. Amnesty doesn't bother to respond.

00:08:17.940 MSF quotes some vague reference to its principles. Human Rights Watch talks something about its

00:08:23.140 Israel work, but nothing actually answers the issues because they don't have to answer it

00:08:27.000 because no one's forcing them to actually do anything about anything.

00:08:30.100 Where this is coming to an interesting head is with Amnesty and J.K. Rowling.

00:08:36.100 I'm not sure how much it's reached Canada,

00:08:39.320 but essentially there's a very public spat going on between Amnesty and J.K. Rowling,

00:08:45.020 whose Center for Victims of Rape they called out in a recent briefing as being anti-rights.

00:08:51.980 and J.K. Rowling and other groups have taken to this very badly and are threatening legal

00:08:59.720 suits. And it's now gone to the Charity Commission of the UK, as it rightly should.

00:09:05.700 So I think we're beginning to see that people are beginning to question the output of these

00:09:11.380 organizations. And these flippant, dismissive, or altogether non-reactive organizations

00:09:19.640 are having their moment.

00:09:21.860 They simply can't get away with us

00:09:23.620 not proving what they say is true anymore.

00:09:28.580 I feel their moment of reckoning is coming, hopefully.

00:09:31.840 You have a quote in the report saying,

00:09:35.500 academic frameworks and far-left activist models

00:09:38.860 were treated as moral authority.

00:09:40.900 Staff repeated slogans as if they were insights.

00:09:43.920 Post-colonial theory swept through institutions.

00:09:46.980 The global South was romanticized,

00:09:48.920 decolonizing rhetoric became compulsory and priorities were shaped less by field realities

00:09:54.700 than by internal status games fundraising incentives and political fashion i like that

00:10:02.240 term political fashion because it does seem to drive a lot of what's going on people you know

00:10:08.660 it's like madonna's old song strike a pose there's nothing to it and and you strike a pose and you

00:10:14.780 say, well, this is where I stand. Not necessarily a lot of deep thinking going into it or how,

00:10:21.200 you know, and this goes back to what J.K. Rowling is trying to do in the UK. I have followed her

00:10:26.840 work there, and I think she's being bashed in the most unfair ways for standing up for women. But 0.81

00:10:34.300 people don't think about what their stance actually leads to or what their stance means.

00:10:42.640 it's just, well, I'm with this tribe, ergo, I follow this. Do you find that happened within

00:10:49.980 these groups? Yes. And I think I saw this as early as 2019, which is a point at which I actually

00:10:58.280 wrote something formally to the General Counsel at Human Rights Watch, because there was a

00:11:02.980 annual gathering of the organization that by that point was about 600 people, I think.

00:11:08.080 And it had an annual gathering in New York every year called Crosscutting. And I was fascinated that Israel came up in every single plenary session of this organization. That means, you know, it sort of was obvious that it was becoming the touchstone. It was becoming the point that people rallied around, even when they had no experience of the region.

00:11:34.000 In fact, I was probably the person, one of the top five people in the room with the most experience of the region.

00:11:39.920 And so I found it fascinating and deeply disturbing. And I saw new stuff coming into the organization, pretty neutral, and looking around for their points of reference to integrate into the organization and finding it quickly in sort of mouthing platitudes about Palestine or free Gaza when they really didn't seem to have any knowledge or skin in the game.

00:12:08.020 um so it became a very easy entry point to prove loyalty and so and also on the flip side if you

00:12:14.020 didn't publicly spout this stuff then i think a cloud of suspicion arose around you so so you

00:12:20.500 you became a potential problem if you weren't uh going on and on about uh settler colonialism

00:12:28.000 and apartheid state israel yeah i think there was a lot and this is repeated by people from

00:12:34.040 other organizations consistently that simply wanting to remain neutral in the organization

00:12:39.480 or maintain professionalism and not talk about your political views or your background when

00:12:44.840 you're dealing with the Middle East is itself sort of becomes uncomfortable for people. They

00:12:49.400 sort of need to know where you are and where you need to be is increasingly thinking in terms of

00:12:55.920 one line of thought. And that's really troubling for organizations that were really founded upon

00:13:03.600 the principle of discourse and interpretation. There's nothing written in law. There's no sort

00:13:11.100 of infallibility about human rights. It's a matter of interpretation. If you even look at

00:13:15.300 the way human rights were applied 60 years ago, it's very different to today. It's constantly

00:13:19.400 evolving. So the idea that we've suddenly got it written in stone and there is a way to think

00:13:24.120 about human rights and there is a way to think about the Middle East or rights or gender is

00:13:29.740 deeply disturbing and it's also really antithetical to the origins and the early evolution of these

00:13:36.960 groups now you talk about people in organizations in the report you talk about people in organizations

00:13:45.880 like green peace uh spain you talk about uh organizations based in australia this permeates

00:13:53.620 through a good part of western politics though this is not this is something that does touch

00:13:58.860 in Canada, in North America,

00:14:01.440 I was watching a debate between two Democrats.

00:14:04.520 Well, one was a Democrat,

00:14:06.020 one was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America

00:14:10.420 that's trying to challenge an establishment Democrat.

00:14:14.300 And the entire conversation was about where they stood

00:14:18.540 when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian issue.

00:14:21.940 And if you weren't pro-Hamas,

00:14:24.120 you were not good enough for the Democratic Socialists.

00:14:26.460 If you dare to say anything positive about Israel, it's bad.

00:14:31.760 We have here in Canada, the leader of Alberta's NDP, former mayor of Calgary, a city with

00:14:38.140 not an insignificant Jewish population, issued an apology the other day for having his photograph

00:14:46.140 taken with the Israeli ambassador.

00:14:48.960 He was at the Calgary Stampede, the greatest outdoor show on earth, an event every politician

00:14:53.700 goes to.

00:14:54.320 And here's what he said.

00:14:55.820 I want to speak to you from the heart about a photo going around from last weekend. I'm so

00:15:00.400 sorry for the harm it caused. As one of many public events at Stampede, I was approached by

00:15:05.500 the Israeli ambassador. We had a very brief and frank exchange during which a photo was taken.

00:15:11.300 After talking to many people in the community over the last few days, I better understand

00:15:15.760 the immense hurt that has been caused to a lot of folks. And he goes on to apologize for allowing

00:15:21.560 a photograph to be taken of him while he spoke to the Israeli ambassador. I mean,

00:15:25.920 politicians are supposed to be speaking to diplomats, even if, you know, you just want

00:15:30.980 to tell them how wrong they are. But this is where we're at. I can only imagine what it's

00:15:37.560 like within the NGO world to have this sort of pressure that even speaking to an ambassador of

00:15:45.360 Israel to tell them, hey, I think you're wrong, is an offense. Yes, but I think what this,

00:15:51.960 absolutely, I think what it's been totally appalling for many people within these NGOs,

00:15:57.640 and not only Jews, it has to be said, the report also includes the testimony of non-Jewish staff.

00:16:03.940 But I think the overall significance of the report is not just what's happened to the employees.

00:16:08.380 It's that these very trends and messages that have gone around within these organizations have really become the blueprint for how people are behaving and thinking on the outside.

00:16:21.520 I think it's one of the great overlooked industries of our time, the NGO sector. We simply have underestimated it in terms of its absolute power and reach into our classrooms and courtrooms and newsrooms.

00:16:38.840 It is that their ideas permeate everywhere. It is from these organizations, most significantly, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty in 2021 and 22, that comes the structure and the framework of apartheid.

00:16:53.800 From these organizations came the framing of genocide that then has gone into the public narrative. And from these organizations has come the dehumanization of Jews and Israelis that your Calgary minister is picking up and only reflecting.

00:17:15.240 He's just a product, actually, of something that has been going on in these organizations

00:17:20.180 and has been seeded for a long time.

00:17:22.860 And we've seen this.

00:17:24.160 It's sort of just in the water at this point.

00:17:25.980 So within these organizations that had no definitive criticism, they never categorically

00:17:33.100 sort of condemned Hamas after October the 7th.

00:17:35.620 They didn't amplify the voices of sexual assault survivors or people who were killed on October

00:17:41.320 the 7th.

00:17:42.080 They didn't amplify the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of Israelis caused by Hamas and Hezbollah rockets.

00:17:51.080 And when you constantly downplay the experience of the population, they don't simply rate.

00:17:57.340 They are not human anymore in the public mind. 0.96

00:18:00.260 And there's one interesting, like just for example, there was a mother and her two redheaded babies kidnapped into Gaza, the Bibas family. 0.91

00:18:09.120 and they died in Gaza. And the Human Rights Watch framing of that was that they had died in custody

00:18:18.480 in Gaza. In custody? In custody in Gaza. Just one example of how slights of phrase or

00:18:28.420 buried research, we also know Amnesty deliberately delayed releasing its October 7th report for two

00:18:35.300 years, and then did so in the deadest media week of the year in December, under a headline that

00:18:41.980 gave no indication of what the report was about, and only linked to after links to apartheid and

00:18:47.480 genocide, then what you get is, you know, again, apologies for associating with people who've

00:18:54.920 already become non-human. You mentioned the moral authority a moment ago, and it reminded me of 0.95

00:19:03.180 speaking to Hillel Noor from UN Watch. And he was trying to explain to an audience here in

00:19:10.100 Toronto that, well, the problem is that when the United Nations says something,

00:19:17.440 most people don't think and they say, oh, well, the United Nations says, therefore, it's true.

00:19:23.360 People that haven't paid attention will say, well, Human Rights Watch is an authoritative group.

00:19:29.460 Amnesty International is an authoritative group.

00:19:32.440 Doctors Without Borders is an authoritative group. 1.00

00:19:35.100 They say this, therefore, it must be true.

00:19:38.460 That's a big part of the problem, I think,

00:19:40.820 that you are describing in the report

00:19:43.740 and why it feeds into the wider antisemitism

00:19:50.600 with people who may not be actually thinking,

00:19:55.660 okay, well, I'm going down the road of antisemitism,

00:19:57.560 but they're just absorbing this, and it becomes part of the water that we swim in.

00:20:03.740 Yeah. Well, I think the first gatekeepers are also the media. I don't know why it has come to be

00:20:09.220 that a report from a human rights organization is not treated like a regular source that has to be

00:20:14.400 checked out. And so, you know, it passes through them before it gets to the public often. What

00:20:21.980 we're seeing is, for those who say and quote these organizations, and I absolutely understand

00:20:29.740 why they do, I would simply begin to challenge how they know them to be credible. And if you

00:20:37.120 follow the line of logic, how they know them to be credible, they would say, well, I don't know

00:20:42.880 what they would say, but I think we get to the end point that they think they're credible because

00:20:45.800 largely they've been told they're credible by these organizations themselves. It all comes back

00:20:51.800 to the self-narrative of organizations that are not largely regulated. And I think this is a very

00:20:57.820 important thing for people to understand that while there is some sort of financial regulation

00:21:03.260 in terms of the books, there is no oversight of their output. No one is checking what they're

00:21:10.820 putting out. There's no peer review like in academia. There's no thorough editing process,

00:21:16.000 even though they say it is in terms of their output. And so, I mean, I was the senior editor

00:21:22.240 at Human Rights Watch for 14 years. So I saw this firsthand. I saw work that went through a pipeline

00:21:29.000 getting review of varying degrees, depending on how much time people had and who was editing it.

00:21:35.820 And certainly in the final stage of review where I sat with a group of other people,

00:21:40.800 And theoretically, this was the final, most credible stage of review. It was quickly passed through because they didn't have time to do it. And we were told to spot check effectively. I never saw a researcher's notes in 14 years. And I know that the links were not all fully checked.

00:21:58.020 And so all I'm saying is someone who supports human rights and supports values that they supposedly uphold is we need to do better.

00:22:07.500 These organizations are failing us.

00:22:09.500 And if you do support human rights, you should be questioning them, too.

00:22:14.180 Well, I can tell you that newsrooms also don't have enough time to check.

00:22:19.280 And when it comes to reports like this, my experience is that, well, most journalists

00:22:28.300 are instinctively on the progressive side, even if they don't believe they are.

00:22:34.280 And so if they believe a group to be right wing, they will check it or they will say

00:22:39.040 a right wing group says this.

00:22:41.440 Any other group that is progressive, they just say, well, it's an authoritative body.

00:22:45.940 Clearly, we have to take them at face value.

00:22:49.280 That's my experience after 25 years in this business,

00:22:52.180 but we shall see.

00:22:54.300 All right, we need to take a quick break.

00:22:55.680 When we come back, more on what both Jewish

00:22:58.480 and non-Jewish employees were feeling

00:23:00.600 and reporting back to eight in this report.

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00:23:30.820 This is Tristan Hopper,

00:23:32.220 the host of Canada Did What?

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00:23:55.240 Danielle, in your report, you cite both Jewish and non-Jewish employees

00:23:58.880 of these very well-known human rights groups,

00:24:02.320 these NGOs that we just far too often assume are good,

00:24:08.000 and yet there are problems.

00:24:09.680 Here's a line that stood out to me.

00:24:12.580 It said Jewish employees raised concerns openly at first, then less often, then not at all.

00:24:20.000 In time, they were all gone. 0.72

00:24:22.900 Are you saying that Jewish employees felt they had to leave, were forced out, were just ignored, all of the above? 0.95

00:24:29.320 All of the above.

00:24:30.920 I would say, you know, most people weren't even, to be Jewish in these organizations was not an issue for them, you know, at all.

00:24:41.060 And yet suddenly it seemed to be of real importance to the organizations and colleagues.

00:24:49.020 And so repeatedly across the board, we heard that attempts to raise concerns about the quality or methodology of Israel-Palestine related work,

00:25:00.760 all related to the behavior and conduct of fellow staff that violated the organization's

00:25:08.360 own policies was dismissed or downplayed, even excused. There was one Amnesty USA incoming board

00:25:17.560 member who had just before reposted a cartoon image of Israel flicking away the Star of David

00:25:26.160 and saying, it's either us or us, something like this in Arabic, and also celebrating an attack

00:25:35.260 on Israeli civilians. And the manager said that nothing was going to be done in this case.

00:25:40.940 It reflected her pain, and she still is on the board today. So it began to be a process of

00:25:48.400 realizing that nothing was going to be done, that risk was involved in coming forward. People

00:25:52.920 describe their jobs suddenly evaporating and although being reconstituted a few months later

00:26:00.620 and you couldn't necessarily say it was because of that but it's sort of a fingerprintless crime

00:26:06.080 in a way being excluded from meetings which they were logically should have been participating

00:26:10.740 ignoring and there's a case of a Greenpeace employee who you know literally had PTSD diagnosis

00:26:19.000 And they sort of swatted that away. In fact, even attempted to silence her with an NDA that said no wrongdoing had taken place. And now she's taking some form of legal action. So all manner of retaliation.

00:26:34.940 You cite a report by Olam, which is a Jewish human rights humanitarian network, and in 2025, they surveyed Jewish professionals in secular humanitarian and human rights organizations and found, well, 55% said they had experienced or witnessed anti-Jewish bias or hate.

00:26:54.880 57% reported anti-Israel incidents, such as colleagues questioning Israel's legitimacy or dismissing Jewish experiences biased, and 73% believed organizational responses were ineffective or reported that no action was taken and most felt pressured to suppress aspects of their Jewish identity due to assumptions regarding Israel.

00:27:19.740 That sounds like a pretty hostile work environment, and these are people who probably knew, like, look, they probably don't agree with the Israeli government.

00:27:30.720 They know that the Israeli government is going to be denounced in these organizations.

00:27:35.400 They still wanted to work for them because of their belief in support for human rights, and yet they're basically told, you're not wanted on the voyage.

00:27:45.140 Yeah. And I think what's deeply troubling is the double standard or the difference in response in relation to other minority groups that have come forward from these organizations over the years and come forward with problems.

00:28:00.860 So we had an MSF, African-American or Black employees, sort of talking about racism. We had in the poem, Black Lives Matter happened during my tenure at Human Rights Watch. Me Too happened. And you saw this enormous knee jerk response. Suddenly, you know, there are meetings and everyone's examining their subconsciousness and apologizing and listening to the experiences of colleagues as they should.

00:28:29.240 But when it comes to this, there's literally not even, I'm sorry, that sounds bad, let's look into it. What you get is an absolute denial of anything happening, or you simply get silence. And that alone is already an indication something's really awry in these groups. Surely the response is, let's look into it, let's ask some questions.

00:28:50.240 they simply cannot deny that they are riddled with problems when they've done no internal

00:28:55.180 investigations. They haven't asked any of their Jewish staff what's going on, and nor has there

00:28:59.340 been any external investigation conducted into them. So it's all just hot air. And when we look 0.76

00:29:05.000 at the response to J.K. Rowling, we have amnesty expressing regret, backpedaling, turning itself

00:29:10.940 into the charity commission. And what the bottom line is, is that the reputational impact and the

00:29:19.620 impact on donor dollars is what really drives these organizations. And if they think they can

00:29:24.020 ignore problems because it's not going to cause them any issues, then they're going to ignore it.

00:29:29.660 Tell me about Kenneth Roth, the former executive director at Human Rights Watch, who I'm assuming

00:29:35.900 you worked with. But tell me about him and his reaction to the Bondi Beach massacre, which

00:29:42.040 just still a shocking display of anti-Semitism, people trying to celebrate Hanukkah on a beach

00:29:51.580 in Australia, gunned down by people who, Indian nationals, but, you know, aligned with Islamic

00:30:01.440 extremism, shooting them down on a beach because of what's happening on the other side of the

00:30:07.760 world. And Kenneth Roth did not have the best reaction, did he? The guy who spent years saying

00:30:14.360 he was defending human rights. No, he didn't. He sent out a tweet that said Australia's special

00:30:21.760 envoy to combat anti-Semitism ends up promoting anti-Semitism by cheapening the concept

00:30:26.560 because she links protests against Israel's genocide and apartheid to the anti-Semitism

00:30:31.880 of the Bondi Beach Massacre. I mean, in short, what you see is a sort of word salad of victim

00:30:38.200 blaming and the usual framework of apartheid and genocide, these kind of two dog whistles

00:30:45.780 that have been sounded for people to rally around. And he is not alone in being a leadership figure,

00:30:54.720 although he's not the head of Human Rights Watch anymore. He was for 30 years

00:30:57.940 in setting really troubling tones for their own organizations.

00:31:03.280 So you have the head of MSF, which is Doctors Without Borders, 0.97

00:31:07.480 67,000 people strong reposting a tweet that Israel is a country of child killers.

00:31:12.840 You have the head of the MSF UK office doing a thumbs up and a fist bump emoji

00:31:20.520 to a group called kneecap that was being investigated one of their one of their band

00:31:27.460 members for waving a hezbollah flag or something and shouting some expletive about israel

00:31:32.620 and there's no there's no they're really setting the tone for the organizations to follow them

00:31:39.000 the band's name is kneecap they are outright terrorist supporters you look at the stage

00:31:46.340 names that they adopt you look at their posturing and if you know anything about the troubles in

00:31:51.920 northern ireland you look at it and say okay they are backers of a terrorist group and you can be

00:31:58.340 sympathetic to the republican cause in ireland but um i mean these guys embrace the violent side of

00:32:05.280 it and they're good but yet francesca albanese the un special rapporteur uh for uh the palestinian

00:32:14.320 territories, tried to say that Israel being included in the Eurovision Song Contest was,

00:32:21.580 an attempt to normalize its ongoing genocide. And she is still held up as one of these moral

00:32:31.260 authorities. I mean, not part of an NGO, but I would guess that the NGOs that we've been talking

00:32:38.380 about would support the work of Francesca Albanese and cite her work quite often to

00:32:43.500 support theirs. And she's saying Israel being in Eurovision just supports genocide. But hey,

00:32:49.900 kneecap's good. Yeah, I think I think the look, this report of eight was framed in terms of

00:32:57.540 anti-Semitism and social cohesion because that was the mandate of the Royal Commission.

00:33:04.140 And but it could equally have been termed something entirely different. It could have

00:33:07.540 been called a report on compromise methodology and failed standards and principles and human

00:33:12.980 rights organizations. And I think that's the important message for people, that no matter

00:33:17.140 where you stand on Israel, Palestine, and I can assure you that the people whose voices are

00:33:24.120 reflected in the reports stand themselves all over, you know, and certainly I didn't even ask

00:33:29.040 whether the politics is irrelevant or should be irrelevant, that the importance is that these

00:33:36.160 organizations are putting out work that is compromised in terms of methodology,

00:33:43.580 reeking of ideology at this point, and without anyone really reining them in. Now, that should

00:33:50.400 concern anybody, given their influence. You have a mega sector at the heart of democratic

00:33:57.940 institutions practically doing and behaving exactly as they want. And we have let this

00:34:05.140 happen partly because we do like human rights and we do like NGOs in general. But just because

00:34:11.460 you like the moral mission does not mean you should accept that these are necessarily moral

00:34:18.160 organizations. We have simply stopped seeing this as an industry. And an industry is subject to all

00:34:25.720 sorts of influences. Of course it is. Operational, financial, ideological. And that is why it needs

00:34:34.080 regulation. You point to social media as something of a window into the thinking of people. And you

00:34:45.140 can see the same when it comes to media. An awful lot of reporters give away exactly what they think

00:34:51.060 and where they stand. People that are not like me, they're not opinion people, who are supposed

00:34:56.100 to be the neutral arbiters of truth and justice in the Canadian way. And then they get on social

00:35:01.860 media, and they tell you so much about themselves. You point to that in the report, and even before

00:35:08.980 the attacks of October 7th, 2023, in particular, you point to Amnesty board member Rasha Abdel

00:35:18.240 Latif. Tweeting and retweeting supports for terror attacks on civilians in Tel Aviv,

00:35:26.020 and Amnesty's response is, these tweets and retweets were done in a personal capacity

00:35:30.320 and do not represent the positions of Amnesty International.

00:35:34.140 Is that acceptable?

00:35:36.500 It's just not good enough.

00:35:37.680 It's become a sort of, all these boilerplate responses really indicate organizations out to lunch.

00:35:45.740 They just don't care to really be rigorous with themselves or to uphold their own standards.

00:35:52.080 And this social media world is indeed very complicated, right?

00:35:56.140 I mean, people are allowed to express their personal views.

00:35:58.520 but it's become a real unaddressed area that needs attention. For one significant reason,

00:36:07.580 can people who express sympathy, as one Amnesty International researcher did for the head of

00:36:14.260 Hamas, Yehia Sinwar, and call him a legend, can they necessarily be expected to be conducting

00:36:22.540 their work without those influences. Can the campaigns manager for Amnesty USA, who minimizes

00:36:30.460 the plight of hostages, then be expected to really bat for hostages in her professional work or

00:36:38.620 conduct the same kind of campaign as was conducted for the kidnapped women of Boko Haram? And what

00:36:48.100 we see is that Amnesty International, Amnesty USA did not conduct a campaign for the hostages

00:36:53.360 of Hamas. And so the Red Cross didn't even visit them. They did not say give us access

00:37:03.040 because, you know, a lot of people who are sympathetic to Hamas would say, well, no,

00:37:10.120 they're not hostages. These are prisoners of war. Well, the International Red Cross

00:37:16.060 or Red Crescent Society visits prisoners of war

00:37:20.000 and they check on their health, their well-being.

00:37:24.000 They never once visited the hostages

00:37:26.380 that Hamas took on October 7th.

00:37:28.600 And they still want to be considered credible. 0.95

00:37:32.560 Well, they don't care

00:37:33.680 because no one's really questioning them.

00:37:35.580 They become omnipotent, right?

00:37:37.140 If you know you can get away with anything,

00:37:39.120 and at this point they really have got away

00:37:40.400 with all sorts of things over the decades,

00:37:43.060 then you no longer care.

00:37:44.740 You're not even trying.

00:37:46.060 And I think it's very important to see our report in context, what's happening with J.K. Rowling in context, that these are not isolated events.

00:37:55.600 This is part of a drumbeat of scandals that have happened over the decades, and some of which are featured on that eight website, eightrights.org.

00:38:05.340 And you'll see in the News at Eight section, just scandal after scandal over the years, and they don't seem related at first blush.

00:38:13.600 So you recently had MSF, Doctors Without Borders, and some sexual abuse issues in Chad.

00:38:20.500 You had Oxfam in Haiti.

00:38:22.600 You had amnesty and misuse of AI in its Ukraine work.

00:38:27.800 All sorts of things over the years that don't seem to connect, but they do connect.

00:38:32.160 They connect under the umbrella of lack of accountability.

00:38:36.700 The reason these organizations can have these anti-Semitic, toxic, whatever you call them environments, environments that are entirely unacceptable according to their own standards, the reason that they can put out anti-rights work that is so obviously riddled with ideology is because no one's holding them to account.

00:38:55.600 and so that's where our attention lies it doesn't really lie with we're not a monitoring group we're

00:39:02.740 not interested in tracking their output but we are saying it is now time to bring a level of

00:39:08.500 scrutiny to these organizations and transparency that has been entirely lacking and the ultimate

00:39:14.340 victims of this are not just the employees of their organizations it is the public at large

00:39:19.820 It is public trust, and it is democracy, and it is those policymakers who sadly stand up in their own houses of parliament and quote these pieces of research as if they were gospel without really doing due diligence.

00:39:37.940 We've talked about the fact that they are granted great moral authority.

00:39:42.800 And Amnesty International, in response to Latif's tweets being criticized,

00:39:49.660 well, first resorted to saying, oh, it's unfortunate.

00:39:52.440 She's a Palestinian board member.

00:39:54.020 Now she's being attacked because we criticized the Israeli government.

00:39:58.160 Look, I want human rights groups to question and criticize the Israeli government

00:40:01.860 when they're doing something wrong.

00:40:03.220 but I want them to be balanced in how they do it

00:40:07.840 and also criticize other groups and governments

00:40:10.880 and they're not doing it.

00:40:11.900 So they've got this great moral authority

00:40:13.540 that we have granted them unquestioningly.

00:40:17.760 They influence policy in ways that, as you described,

00:40:21.960 they're quoted in our houses of parliament.

00:40:24.080 But these are also groups that are given status

00:40:28.120 and benefits that other groups don't get.

00:40:30.980 I mean, whether we're talking about Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, the tax status that these organizations receive to have charitable status, to grant tax receipts so that they can solicit donations, that alone should be part of the reason why they should be questioned.

00:40:50.920 Absolutely. I mean, where are they getting their money and how is it being spent?

00:40:55.860 And this is a whole level of inquiry that has yet to be really investigated, but there are troubling signs that are already out there.

00:41:04.600 We have the head of Mercy Corps happily sending a tweet to the organization, well, not a tweet, an email to the organization saying she's off to Qatar and the UAE for fundraising opportunities.

00:41:17.160 Now, these are documented rights abusing states, and she doesn't seem to have any concern. We have a denied scandal involving Human Rights Watch taking money from Qatar about five years ago. We know that Human Rights Watch was a fundraising in Saudi Arabia in 2009.

00:41:36.960 We know that the Israel-Palestine director, Omar Shakir, who was really a prime driver of the apartheid work within Human Rights Watch and came in as a former BDS activist, had a visiting fellowship at the Qatari branch of Georgetown University.

00:41:58.780 We know that because it was on a website.

00:42:00.600 so there are definitely questions to be asked and that is as you rightly say a prime reason

00:42:08.760 why there needs to be greater scrutiny beyond asking questions beyond publications like your

00:42:17.020 report which i encourage people to to look up and read um what should our next steps be what

00:42:24.200 what should we be looking to do, either societal level, governmental level? What do you recommend?

00:42:31.760 I think it really begins with asking questions. It really does. And that is just something anyone

00:42:37.060 can do. Where do you get your information and who are you? Should be a constant drumbeat.

00:42:44.120 And how do you prove what you say is true? So, for example, even in the responses, like I said,

00:42:48.400 to our report, the eye glosses over the responses of these organizations. But when Human Rights Watch

00:42:55.460 responds to a 63-page report with documented evidence by simply quoting its Israel-Palestine

00:43:01.920 work, you've got to say, is that an adequate, rigorous, thoughtful response to the issues?

00:43:08.640 When Amnesty just doesn't bother to respond, you say, well, is that an adequate response to an

00:43:14.680 entire population saying there is a racism problem and there are methodological problems.

00:43:19.240 So I would say questioning. And then beyond that, obviously, there needs to be some form of

00:43:25.760 oversight that now comes into being an interesting idea that comes out of academia, actually,

00:43:33.520 and work there on these organizations, which hasn't really crossed over to the mainstream world,

00:43:39.700 is as an ombudsperson.

00:43:41.880 Maybe there needs to be

00:43:43.060 some international kind of entity

00:43:44.680 that is empowered

00:43:46.160 to investigate these groups,

00:43:48.980 create some sort of standards,

00:43:51.900 provide a safe reporting mechanism

00:43:54.200 for employees,

00:43:55.240 which obviously needs to happen

00:43:56.920 because this pattern of retaliation

00:43:59.280 and fear and self-censorship

00:44:02.120 is already a sign

00:44:03.540 that there's rot from within.

00:44:07.120 All right.

00:44:07.260 You can read the report at eights

00:44:09.700 8rights.org, 8rights.org, that's spell out eight, don't use the number.

00:44:15.880 Danielle Hess, thanks so much for your time today.

00:44:18.200 Thank you so much for having me.

00:44:20.120 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:44:22.700 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:44:24.160 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx.

00:44:26.320 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:44:27.800 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:44:29.620 Make sure that you hit subscribe, share this on social media,

00:44:32.500 and let your friends know about us.

00:44:33.940 Thanks so much for watching, for listening.

00:44:35.300 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:44:40.560 Here's that clip from Canada Did What? Season 2 that we promised for you.

00:44:45.740 Let's review some Canadian inventors, shall we?

00:44:49.120 A Canadian invented kerosene, which was literally the first mass market use for petroleum.

00:44:55.220 We always knew there was oil in the ground, but before kerosene, we didn't know what to do with it.

00:45:00.400 A Canadian invented the foghorn. 0.71

00:45:02.360 Before New Brunswick's Robert Foulihi hit upon the idea of blowing steam through a low-frequency horn,

00:45:08.780 You just had to hope that ships didn't smash into land during foggy conditions.

00:45:13.440 And they often did. 0.50

00:45:15.360 A Canadian invented time zones.

00:45:17.280 Before engineer Sanford Fleming hit upon the idea of time-based global subdivisions,

00:45:22.520 nobody ever really knew what time it was.

00:45:25.600 Well, what if I told you that there is a Canadian inventor whose genius arguably eclipses all of these?

00:45:31.680 A Canadian visionary who, under different circumstances,

00:45:34.900 would have become such a beloved icon of national prestige,

00:45:38.300 that we'd be putting him on postage stamps or naming university wings after him.

00:45:43.560 But instead, you've probably never heard of him.

00:45:46.660 Why?

00:45:47.800 Because, well, he used his genius to build a giant country-destroying supergun

00:45:54.100 for the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. 0.50

00:45:57.360 He essentially became a fiendish secondary character in a real-life James Bond movie,

00:46:02.760 and as we'll learn, he suffered the same fate as a fiendish secondary character

00:46:08.080 in a james bond movie if you want to hear the rest of the story make sure you subscribe to

00:46:14.480 canada did what everywhere you get your podcasts

Full Comment - July 20, 2026

Hate has corrupted the world’s biggest charities

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