Since October 7, 2023, staff in international human rights and humanitarian NGOs report rising antisemitism—subtle and overt—often expressed as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist rhetoric. Independent external staff surveys conducted since October 7 echo these accounts. Even when acknowledged, incidents are often dismissed as one-offs and rarely sanctioned, despite being part of a wider sectoral pattern. Staff report double standards: speech policed rigorously in other contexts is tolerated when directed at Jews or Israelis. The result is a toxic workplace, emboldened hostility, and leadership that too often looks away. The following first-person account is one such example: A few colleagues were eating. When they ended their meal and were getting up to go back to work, one of them said "Arbeit macht frei" (the sentence written above the entrance of Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and other Nazi camps). It wasn't a phrase you'd ever have thought could be heard at work or used so lightly considering its psychological impact in the past. It shocked the Jewish and non-Jewish staff who were present.
