Euro-Med ran 100 articles against Israel and zero on October 7 — yet the Guardian and NYT still cite it as neutral

On Wednesday, May 13, 2026, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published a report on a Geneva-based NGO, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) summarized it the same day. The report names Euro-Med’s founder and chairman, Ramy Abdu. In November 2020, Israel issued an administrative seizure order against him under its Counter-Terrorism Law. The order cited his alleged activity with “IPalestine.” Israel has designated that group as Hamas-affiliated. It stayed in effect until August 1, 2022. That order was a counter-terror measure, not a court conviction. The report also ties Euro-Med to South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Euro-Med supplied what the report calls “evidentiary infrastructure” for it — the material South Africa cited to accuse Israel of genocide.

None of this is new. NGO Monitor’s standing dossier on Euro-Med has carried the seizure order and the Hamas-operatives-list placement for years. What is new is how visible the payoff has become. On May 11, 2026, the New York Times ran a Nicholas Kristof column on alleged sexual violence in Israeli prisons. It drew on Euro-Med material. The next week, the Jerusalem Post named Euro-Med as “one of the primary information sources relied upon” for that column.

This is the Hoffer move, named for the social thinker Eric Hoffer. The in-group — the press culture aligned with the case against Israel — takes in whatever source serves its cohesion. That source does not need to earn trust. It only needs to be useful. Here the source is a Hamas-aligned NGO whose founder Israel placed under a counter-terrorism order. The payoff is a clean-looking citation for charges against Israel that would not otherwise clear a newsroom’s evidence bar. We name it.

What Euro-Med actually is

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor was founded in Geneva in November 2011. Its founder and chairman is Ramy Abdu, a Palestinian finance scholar with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University. His Wikipedia profile lists his past roles:

• Palestine Office Manager for the Council for European Palestinian Relations
• board member of the International Platform of NGOs Working for Palestine
• media coordinator for Freedom Flotilla II

The board of trustees is chaired by Richard A. Falk. Falk is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories and a Princeton law professor emeritus. He left the UN post in 2014.

He has publicly suggested the 9/11 attacks raise unanswered questions about the official US account. NGO Monitor describes him as “a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.” It also notes his published comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany.

So the man who chairs this board sits outside the consensus on what caused September 11. The New York Times and the BBC cite his group as a neutral human-rights authority anyway.

Euro-Med’s prior board chair was Mazen Kahel, who chaired the group from 2015 to 2019. He also appears on Israel’s 2013 publicly issued list of Hamas’s “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. Abdu appears on that same 2013 list.

The group publishes no financial accounts. NGO Monitor says so plainly. Euro-Med “does not publish any financial data on its website, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.” There is a second sign. Wikipedia’s Euro-Med entry records that its bid for UN consultative status has been put off again and again.

This is one of the most-cited Gaza sources in English-language media. Yet we cannot know who funds it. What we do know is the founder’s record.

He appears on Israel’s 2013 list of Hamas operatives in Europe. He spent two years under an Israeli counter-terrorism seizure order over activity with a Hamas-designated front. That record is the one public answer to “whose money.” A newsroom that would not cite a Hamas press release should not cite this source either.

The citation pattern

Euro-Med’s findings have appeared in The Guardian, CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, Reuters, The Independent, and Al Jazeera. By the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs’ count, its work also runs in more than 400 academic publications. Wikipedia’s own Euro-Med entry lists the same outlets. It notes that editors have flagged several Euro-Med-sourced claims as unreliable or self-published.

In a December 31, 2023 piece, HonestReporting documented the BBC, CNN, EuroNews, Metro UK, and Middle East Eye citation pattern. It also counted Euro-Med’s output after October 7.

In the war’s first eleven weeks, Euro-Med ran about one hundred Israel-focused pieces. It ran zero on the October 7 atrocities. It ran zero on the hostages held in Gaza.

Look at the imbalance. The group published nothing on one party’s mass atrocity. It published one hundred pieces on the other party’s response. That is an advocacy operation.

There is nothing wrong with being an advocacy operation. There is something wrong with being cited as a neutral human-rights body when you are not.

CAMERA UK’s January 2, 2024 documentation walks through the BBC pattern. Euro-Med staff appeared across BBC English- and foreign-language coverage from October through early December 2023. That included its chief of programmes, Muhammad Shehada. The BBC disclosed none of the warning signs: not the leadership profile, not the funding opacity, not the one-sided output.

The pattern did not stop at newsrooms. The same Euro-Med material reached the world court. South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice drew on what the Ministry report calls Euro-Med’s “evidentiary infrastructure.” A Hamas-aligned NGO that publishes no accounts helped build the evidence file for the gravest charge in international law.

What Euro-Med has said that no one could confirm

Start with the one claim that is not merely unconfirmed but affirmatively false. Within days of the October 7 attack, while the bodies of 1,200 murdered Israelis were still being identified, Abdu suggested the attack-scene visuals had been “doctored.” He claimed “assault rifles appear to have been added.” The footage was not doctored. The 1,200 dead identified by name prove it.

The rest of Euro-Med’s record follows the same shape. In November 2023, it published an organ-theft claim built like a blood libel — the centuries-old antisemitic lie that Jews harvest the bodies of their victims. It said Israel is “classified as one of the world’s biggest hubs for the illegal trade of human organs.” It alleged “horrific mass field executions” of wounded patients by Israeli forces at al-Shifa Hospital.

NGO Monitor records each claim. No one has confirmed the organ-trade or al-Shifa allegations, and newsrooms repeated several without ever flagging the source.

This is not the work of a neutral human-rights monitor. It is the work of a denial-and-defamation operation aligned with the party that committed the October 7 attack.

In June 2024, Euro-Med published another claim: that Israel uses dogs trained to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners. About two years later, that claim surfaced again.

It appeared in the Nicholas Kristof New York Times column named above. No first-person source was attached. The Jerusalem Post noted that “Abdu had shared the dog rape allegation for many years.”

Trace the chain. It starts with a Hamas-aligned NGO that publishes no accounts. Its founder spent two years under an Israeli counter-terrorism order. It ends on the opinion pages of the most influential American newspaper.

Kristof’s column drew on more than one source. But it carried this specific claim — the dog-rape allegation — with no named victim and no word about where it came from. Euro-Med was one of the column’s primary sources, and Euro-Med is a Hamas-aligned NGO that publishes no accounts. So the most-read American op-ed page ran that unconfirmed claim under its own letterhead, without telling readers whose claim it was. That is the version the evidence supports.

None of this means Israel never abuses a detainee. Where it happens, Israel’s own military justice acts. In February 2025, military prosecutors indicted five IDF reservists over the severe abuse of a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman facility. That is the tell. Israel investigates and charges its own for real cases. Euro-Med manufactures blood-libel-shaped claims that no one can confirm — dogs “trained” to rape, October 7 footage “doctored” — and hands them to newsrooms as fact.

Why the move works

Eric Hoffer wrote about it. A mass movement does not need its sources to be true. It needs them to be useful.

Once “Euro-Med says” carries weight in the movement’s case against Israel, the in-group takes the source in. After that, the in-group defends the source’s standing. It defends that standing because it needs the source, not because the record earns it.

Mainstream newsrooms are not formally part of the movement against Israel. But the editorial culture inside many of them now overlaps with it. The overlap shows in which claims feel safe to print. It shows in which sources feel safe to cite.

Citing Euro-Med feels safe. The name has “Human Rights Monitor” in it. The address is Geneva. The board chair is a former UN Special Rapporteur.

The cues match the form of a neutral source. They do not match the substance.

No editor would knowingly cite a Hamas press release. But they cite Euro-Med and feel they have done their sourcing. Look at what they are citing:

• Israel placed Euro-Med’s founder under a counter-terrorism order over a Hamas-designated front.
• Its former and current leaders both appear on Israel’s 2013 published list of Hamas operatives in Europe.
• In two months of war, it published one hundred articles against Israel — and zero on the October 7 atrocity or the hostages Hamas seized.

They have not done their sourcing. They have laundered a Hamas-aligned voice through a Geneva address. The practice is now a documented two-year pattern. They can no longer plausibly call it inadvertent.

Where to check every claim

Check each source for yourself.

• JNS summarized the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs’ report in its May 13 piece, reprinted in the Cleveland Jewish News syndication.
• The Jerusalem Post’s May 14 explainer names Euro-Med as a primary source for the Kristof column. It records Abdu’s multi-year promotion of the dog claim.
• Ynetnews’ English-language report details the Ministry’s findings on the IPalestine link. It also lists Euro-Med’s projects: HuMedia, We Are Not Numbers, and WikiRights.
• NGO Monitor’s standing Euro-Med dossier is the deepest research-grade source here. It covers the funding opacity, the leadership profile, the 2013 Hamas-operatives list placement of both Abdu and former chair Mazen Kahel, and the catalog of debunked or unconfirmed claims.
• HonestReporting’s December 31, 2023 piece maps the citation pattern across CNN, BBC, EuroNews, Metro UK, and Middle East Eye.
• HonestReporting’s March 9, 2026 follow-up covers the WikiRights training program, where Euro-Med teaches Gaza-based contributors to edit Wikipedia.
• CAMERA UK’s January 2, 2024 piece walks through the BBC-specific pattern.

The Wikipedia entries on Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and Ramy Abdu are useful too. But they are also targets of the citation-laundering campaign, as the HonestReporting WikiRights work shows. Read them aware of the editorial-capture pattern.

Then do the simple test. Read Euro-Med’s own site. Count the Israel pieces. Count the Hamas pieces. Read its leadership page. Cross-check the names against Israel’s 2013 list. Then look up the news stories you remember that said “rights group says.” Ask which ones were really saying “Euro-Med says” in the small print.

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A name on the masthead is not a credential. A Geneva headquarters is not a credential. A board chair with a Princeton emeritus title is not a credential either. Not when that same person has written that the 9/11 official account is not adequate.

“Human Rights Monitor” in the masthead is not a credential when the group publishes no accounts. It is not a credential when the founder sits under a counter-terrorism order over a Hamas-designated front. The credential is the record. The record is not there.

The newsrooms that cited Euro-Med as a neutral source over the last two years made an editorial choice every time. Each choice looks defensible on its own. There was deadline pressure. The source has a Geneva address.

The quote sounds clean. Together, the choices are not defensible. They built a citation infrastructure for a movement that needed one. That infrastructure now does work that no fact-finding process did.

Set the two events side by side. The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children published a 290-page forensic report on a documented mass atrocity. The day before, the New York Times published a Kristof column built partly on Euro-Med material.

The asymmetry is not in the evidence. It is in which source got the in-group’s reflex to cite. The Civil Commission did the work. Euro-Med supplied the citation. The reflex went the wrong way.

MissingBridge will keep naming the move. We will name the source by what its record shows, not by what its masthead says. We will name the editors who keep printing “rights group says” without doing the half-hour of work behind it.

That work would tell their readers which rights group this is. It would tell them which leadership, and which published accounts. The half-hour is the job. If you can see that, and you are willing to say so out loud, you are already reading the way the moment requires.

Read with us. Share when we earn it. Tell us when we miss.