US Senate foreign relations committee pens letter for reconsideration of new ICRC head

Republican US Senator Jim Risch from Idaho led senators of the Foreign Relations Committee in sending a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Committee announced on Monday. The letter was written in order to request a reconsideration of Pierre Krahenbuhl's appointment as director general due to his previous mismanagement of UNRWA, which he ran between 2014 and 2019. 

The senators who signed the letter include Senators Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican; Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi Republican; Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican; Rick Scott, Florida Republican; Pete Ricketts, Nebraska Republican; John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican; Mike Braun, Indiana Republican; John Boozman, Arkansas Republican; Mike Crapo, Idaho Republican; Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican; Steve Daines, Montana Republican; Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican; Todd Young, Indiana Republica; John Cornyn, Texas Republican; Bill Cassidy Louisiana Republican; and Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican.

Krahenbuhl was forced to quit UNRWA in 2019 in light of an internal ethics report that charged him with an alleged sexual affair with his chief advisor during world trips, abuse of power, and corruption, which, at the time, caused Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and New Zealand to freeze funding, according to NGO, UN Watch. The allegations were corroborated by a May 2021 report by Geneva’s Le Temps.    

According to Hillel Neuer, the director of UN Watch, in addition to his corruption and mismanagement, “Krahenbuhl promoted a false narrative that he was pushed out by a Trump-Israel-Jewish cabal,” he wrote on his X account, formerly Twitter.

The letter from the senators

The letter states that the credible allegations against him, including “mismanagement, ethical misconduct, and abuse of authority”  at UNRWA in 2019, “disqualify him from leading the ICRC at this pivotal moment in history.”

In addition, the letter notes that during his tenure at UNRWA, “UNRWA facilities were repeatedly used to store weapons on behalf of the US-designated foreign terrorist organization Hamas. Moreover, under Mr. Krahenbuhl’s leadership, UNRWA textbooks included antisemitic material that incited anti-Israeli violence.” 

The letter continues to say that the failure to address this, arguably, was a precursor to the October 7 massacre, which “we now know included direct participation by UNRWA employees.”

The letter concludes, “The United States Congress takes these allegations and corresponding evidence extremely seriously. As the largest donor to the ICRC, we cannot stand idly by as yet another international organization falls prey to antisemitism and violence, let alone gross mismanagement and moral corruption.”

The ICRC has already been charged with holding anti-Israel bias since the October 7 massacre. The Red Cross has been heavily scrutinized for failing to visit Israeli hostages and not reporting that the hostages had been taken to Shifa Hospital. 

The Jerusalem Insitute of Justice (JIJ) conducted an analysis of the ICRC’s social media following Hamas's October 7 massacre and found that there were no posts, images, graphics, or videos highlighting the damages suffered by Israel as a result of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Neither were there any posts addressing the October 7 tragedy, rockets launched by Hamas indiscriminately at civilian populations, or the hostages kidnapped.