Published: 14 July 2026
Last updated: 3 August 2026
More than half of Jewish professionals working in secular humanitarian organisations say they have experienced or witnessed anti-Jewish bias and almost three-quarters said organisations' responses were ineffective.
The figures come from a survey of more than 70 Jewish and non-Jewish professionals within the humanitarian, development, and environmental organisations from Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs), including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières/MSF), Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mercy Corps, Plan International, Save the Children, and UNICEF.
The survey was conducted by a group of human rights professionals called EiGHT, who compiled the results in a submission prepared for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
The research identified internal cultures that dehumanise Israel and are hostile to Jewish identity, with a lack of effective complaints procedures or consequences. There was a one-eyed view of the Israel-Palestine conflict where Zionism was assumed to be an evil and anyone who identified as a Zionist– Jewish or not – was marginalised.
“Jewish staff reported exclusion, psychological harm, and professional vulnerability within workplaces ostensibly committed to equality,” the submission said.
Staff reported they were afraid to speak out within their workplaces. “Jewish employees raised concerns openly at first. Then less often. Then not at all. In time, they were all gone,” one worker from an international NGO told researchers.
The submission said complaint procedures were not effective. Several contributors reported that concerns about antisemitism were reframed as interpersonal conflict, political disagreement, or communications issues rather than discrimination requiring institutional response.
