Former MSF leader says Doctors Without Borders is complicit with Hamas

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Médecins Sans Frontières, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is an organization that most assume is focused on providing much-needed aid and supplies in difficult environments, without bias or favor. However, one of the organization’s former leaders criticizes the way MSF handled the situation in Gaza, even going so far as to describe its members as “accomplices of Hamas.”
Alain Destexhe, who worked as a doctor at MSF in the 1980s before becoming the group’s secretary general in the 1990s, told Fox News Digital that the organization had strayed from its humanitarian and impartial roots.
“Well, it would have been impossible, when I was secretary general of MSF, to be as biased as MSF – Doctors Without Borders – is today in Gaza. We define ourselves as a neutral, impartial and humanitarian organization,” Destexhe told Fox News Digital. “I think now MSF in Gaza is really siding with Hamas and against Israel.”
US-backed Gaza aid organization criticizes Doctors Without Borders, accuses it of spreading ‘false’ claims

A building belonging to the medical association Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 21, 2024. (Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is no longer the organization it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased and militant organization,” he later added.
On October 12, 2023, less than a week after Hamas carried out its brutal massacre and took more than 250 people hostage, MSF condemns the massacre but also called for an end to Israel’s actions in Gaza, without mentioning the hostages.
“Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is horrified by the brutal massacres of civilians perpetrated by Hamas and by the massive attacks on Gaza, Palestine, now carried out by Israel,” the organization wrote. “MSF calls for an immediate end to the indiscriminate bloodshed and the creation of safe spaces and passages for people to access urgently.”
Beyond the organization’s condemnation of the massacre and Israeli actions, Destexhe discovered several social media posts on accounts allegedly belonging to MSF staff members appearing to celebrate the October 7 massacre. Destexhe told Fox News Digital that a large portion of MSF staff in the Gaza Strip are Palestinians, not foreign workers.

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house that took place in Zawayda, in the central Gaza Strip, on July 1, 2025. (Reuters/Ramadan Abed)
While Israel is blamed for Gaza’s hunger crisis, UN data shows that most of its aid is looted.
Destexhe acknowledged that to operate in Gaza, MSF must work with Hamas, because the terrorist group controls “all civil society and all medical facilities” in the enclave. He said it would have been impossible to operate alone during his tenure as secretary-general and the organization said it could not work with “a totalitarian, terrorist organization.”
“The only thing MSF can do is say, ‘no, we don’t want to be part of it. We have to leave Gaza. And we don’t want to become complicit with a terrorist organization like Hamas,'” Destexhe told Fox News Digital.
MSF has come under scrutiny for its actions and statements regarding the situation in Gaza.
Earlier this year, MSF launched ads against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an organization supported by the United States and Israel. MSF accuses GHF of participating in “systematized violence”.
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay called MSF’s accusations “false and shameful.” He said the organization was amplifying misinformation.

Palestinians move with their belongings as they flee their homes following Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, May 16, 2025. (Reuters/Mahmoud Issa)
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Last month, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., requested that Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate MSF under the antiterrorism law. In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Stefanik claimed that MSF’s attacks on the GHF “reflect the propaganda continually pushed by Hamas and threaten to undermine the only large-scale humanitarian food operation currently underway in Gaza.”
Destexhe also noted in his interview with Fox News Digital that MSF echoed the sentiments and statistics of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. This included the swift condemnation of an explosion at al-Ahali hospital.
Although it was later discovered that the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, MSF neither corrected nor removed its condemnation, which is still available on but has a community rating.
“MSF is lying, MSF is biased, MS is biased and MSF is complicit with Hamas,” Destexhe said.
Destexhe believes that 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 will not change,” he said.
Destexhe believes that without MSF in Gaza, there would still be doctors to treat patients in need and that the organization has “no added value” in the region.

Hamas terrorists form a formation as Palestinians gather on a street to watch the handover of three Israeli hostages to a Red Cross team in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, February 8, 2025. (Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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He recalled previous times when MSF prioritized ethics over presence, such as during the withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a decision made during his tenure as secretary general.
In 1994, during the Rwandan genocide, part of the organization chose to leave, thinking that 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, thus further strengthening the power of the genocidaires over the refugees, or withdrawing from the camps and leaving a population in distress.”
Ultimately, the French section of the organization withdrew at the end of 1994, while the Dutch, Belgian and Spanish sections chose to stay. 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.
Beth Bailey of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.