WHO is None Too Keen on Jews Stephen Buetow & Kira Baccal
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2023/12/who-is-none-too-keen-on-jews/
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a United Nations agency whose primary focus is to improve global public health. It claims to be politically impartial and to use its technical expertise to bring scientific evidence to bear on international issues whose politics impact health. However, the WHO r over-reaches this scope of practice and fails to uphold its founding principles, including egalitarianism and neutrality in global health governance. The 2023 Israel‑Hamas war is the latest reminder that the WHO, in its 75th anniversary year, perpetuates anti‑Israel bias and anti-Semitism.
Like any form of racism, anti-Semitism is an intolerable moral evil of concern to all people who value human dignity and justice. By anti‑Semitism, we mean Jew-hatred, as codified in the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition, and not a reasoned debate about or legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy.
Indeed, political divisions are evident in Israel itself. They accommodate calls to increase respect for Palestinians’ right to health without delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist and dehumanizing Jews and Israelis, including the 20 per cent of Israeli citizens who are Arabs. Contemporary expressions of Jew-hatred include anti-Zionism. Amid increased anti-Westernism, it weaponizes the anti‑Semitism that is surging worldwide.
Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism because, as British commentator Melanie Phillips explained in 2019, to treat Israel “as a Jew among nations to be uniquely vilified, slandered, and exterminated” is anti-Semitic. This article demonstrates how the WHO exemplifies such bias, acts against the sovereign equality of states, and promotes Israel’s disengagement rather than cooperation in confronting health emergencies in crises like the Israel‑Gaza war. We will discuss how WHO’s treatment of, and communications about Israel, differ from its diplomatic response to other states and conflicts. WHO’s condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and international pressure for a ceasefire serve as a case study.
Differential treatment of Israel
Non-governmental organisation UN Watch has chronicled how the world body and its agencies have normalised one-sided condemnation of the Jewish state. Two previous director‑generals of the UN have publicly acknowledged UN bias against Israel, yet this bias persists. Although Israel comprises only 0.1% of the global population, 15 of 18 condemnatory resolutions in the 2022 UN General Assembly specifically targeted Israel. Similarly, annual WHO assemblies have repeatedly singled out Israel for censure. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s current director-general, has never addressed the disproportionate time and resources his organization devotes to criticising Israel. Annual WHO assemblies continually select Israel — and Israel alone — for criticism. Perhaps to offset this, WHO has extended a few, very thin olive branches.
WHO introduced a “country cooperation statement” with Israel, 2019-2025. Israel hosted WHO’s 2022 session of the European Regional Committee, and an Israeli health professional was elected to WHO’s executive committee for three years, starting in 2024. However, these minor improvements cannot compensate for the WHO’s ongoing denunciation and isolation of Israel. Of 194 WHO member states, only Israel has been subjected to an annual resolution and report every year since 1968. Even during the peak of the COVID pandemic in 2021, WHO dedicated a whole day of its annual meeting to scrutinising Israel. It did not seek to defuse conspiracy theories linking Israel to the pandemic or address the issue of vaccine hesitancy in the Arab world.
Instead, it blamed Israel (alone) for not ensuring Palestinians enjoyed equal access to COVID vaccines. Notably, it did not set expectations for the Palestinian governing authorities to assume responsibility or even promote joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts, as one might have expected from an organization dedicated to promoting diplomacy to improve global health.
Since 2015, Israel has been the country target of 9 of 11 condemnatory WHO resolutions. Urgent health priorities in countries other than Israel and Ukraine received no attention. No condemnation was made of bombings by Syrian and Russian forces on medical facilities in Syria or health crises in Yemen and Venezuela. Indeed, these repressive states were among the sponsors of resolutions condemning Israel! WHO’s current treatment of health-rights abuses in the Israel-Hamas war is similarly a manifestation of bias against the Jewish state.
WHO did reproach Hamas for its October 7 massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 247 hostages, including children, women and the elderly. But it has nevertheless failed to decry Hamas as the terrorist group that deliberately disabled Israeli ambulances and murdered first responders, while posting to social media sickening videos celebrating its assault against innocent Jews and, in effect, civilisation itself. In this regard WHO epitomizes the deafening silence of the world health community generally. By failing to insist Hamas returns all hostages immediately and safely, WHO keeps ignoring or downplaying ongoing violations of health and human rights, including Hamas’ misuse of medical facilities for military purposes.
Instead, WHO has strongly condemned Israel for “deliberately” targeting children and families and abducting and torturing of other Gazans. This double standard is clearly documented and ongoing. Why has the WHO and its parent organization done nothing to correct this behaviour?
An obvious, credible explanation is anti-Semitism entrenched in WHO’s membership and other UN agencies guaranteeing an automatic and critical majority in resolutions, reports and committees. Through the Organization of Arab Cooperation, Arab League, and so-called Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab states control this majority, weaponising the UN system against Israel. Less than half the WHO members are fully free democracies. Many are dictatorships and other repressive regimes. Their record on health and other human rights disqualifies their “moral” reproach of Israel while deflecting attention from their own gross violations of human rights. As a permanent observer state since 2012, Palestine consistently co-sponsors resolutions against Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East and outpost of Western success. Misunderstanding the history of the region, even liberal democracies may mistake the WHO for being independent and objective and thus accept its condemnation of Israel as legitimate. For example, since at least 2015, New Zealand has given Israel much less support at the WHO than states like Australia with shared values.
Loaded language
WHO resolutions accuse Israel of discrimination and non-compliance with international law. They exculpate Hamas from any responsibility (current and historical) for the plight of ordinary Palestinians. References to Israel’s “prolonged occupation” of “occupied Palestinian territory” exemplify this bias. “Occupation” of territory does not violate international law but carries pejorative meanings and is biased here because the “occupation of Palestinian territory” is disputed. The international legal principle of uti possidetis juris (literally meaning “as you possess”) has been central in determining territorial sovereignty during decolonization. According to this principle, Israel’s borders match the borders of the previous geopolitical entity set by the British Mandate of Palestine. In law, there has never been a state of Palestine to occupy. Holding Israel to the stringent legal requirements of an occupier is prejudicial.
Furthermore, Israel completely disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005 in hope of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian people. In customary law, this voluntary withdrawal ceded effective control of and obligations to Gaza, as required by the legal definition of occupation (Article 43 of the Fourth Hague Convention). Moreover, the term “occupation” is used nowhere else in the world unless there is a military presence or puppet regime, neither of which is present in Gaza. That Israel has not controlled Gaza’s daily governanceis evident from the security threats necessitating a blockade by Israel (and Egypt). Still, WHO blames the Israeli blockade alone for Gaza’s under‑resourced health system in which, if Gaza were a country, life expectancy at birth was in the top half of all nations when the war began. The WHO has similarly ignored Hamas’s chronic commandeering of foreign aid money to bolster its terror infrastructure.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza
There is no moral equivalence between Hamas’s depraved attacks in southern Israel and Israel’s justified response to rescue its hostages and safeguard its borders. No-none denies the tragic loss of innocent lives in Gaza in a war, particularly when Hamas uses children, women, other civilians, and the hostages as human shields and weapons of propaganda.
Despite this, WHO has strongly condemned Israel for the number of civilian deaths in Gaza directly resulting from Hamas’s pogrom on October 7. In doing so, it has blindly accepted unverified reports from the Gaza Health Ministry which is, of course, controlled by Hamas and thus motivated to inflate casualties for propaganda value. It has made no mention of Hamas’ responsibility for inciting the Israeli counteroffensive or its obligation to safeguard its people by working towards a speedy resolution that includes returning all hostages. It has also disregarded the failure of Hamas to protect civilians under Rule 22 of customary international humanitarian law and move its fighters and munitions to non-civilian areas.
Disregarding Israel’s assiduous efforts to minimise civilian casualties, WHO forgets that Israel – unlike Hamas – does not deliberately target civilians. Israel attacks military facilities that Hamas has located in hospitals and schools, while ambulances ferry terrorists and weapons. WHO selectively ignores Article 21 of the Geneva Conventions, which discontinues the protection of medical establishments from military attack if “used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy.” It focuses one-sidedly on blaming Israel’s attacks for the “totally unacceptable” civilian deaths in Gaza.
Even while held to standards not expected of any other nation, Israel has minimized the number of civilian deaths. When feasible, it warns of military attacks that may endanger civilians to enable them to escape the area. Repeated calls (not “orders”) from Israel for non-combatants to evacuate at-risk areas exemplify this practice. International humanitarian law, which is often customary and vague, does not require such warnings. Yet, WHO and UN vilify Israel, even as it goes well beyond its legal duty to try to free civilians from battlespaces and minimise the risk of harm to innocents.
WHO perpetuates the myth that Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated areas from which evacuation is not feasible. Certainly, evacuation is challenging, especially when Hamas prevents civilians, among whom it hides, from leaving combat zones. However, moving away from these areas is safer than staying, particularly when Hamas makes it difficult for Israel to distinguish between fighters and civilians by dressing as civilians or, as on October 7, as Israeli first responders.
In addition, WHO directs no attention, let alone condemnation, to the unwillingness of Egypt and other Arab states to open their borders and take in Palestinians. Nor does WHO endorse the option of Hamas negotiating its surrender to Israel, which would allow humanitarian convoys to enter Gaza as quickly as possible. Instead, the UN and WHO nurture Palestinian grievances and insist that Israel agree to a tactical and strategically unwise ceasefire in Gaza.
Calls for a ceasefire
WHO pressure on Israel for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza may appear benign – even laudable – in calling for a peace that would see re-established health care. But Israel can only defend its population, including Arab citizens, by removing an enemy fanatically committed to its destruction. Hamas’s 1988 Covenant and 2017 document of general principles and policies explicitly identify its goals of eliminating Israel, rejecting any peace settlement, and endless jihad against the perceived enemys of Islam). Hamas has already vowed to repeat its heinous attacks on Israeli and Jewish civilians in the context of an international jihad that would expand the barbarism of October 7 to Jews around the world. The expectation that Hamas would ever willingly negotiate and accept a two-state solution is naïve and implausible.
Yet another ceasefire would be a momentary pause in the cycle of violence against Israel, which means more to Hamas than Gaza achieving statehood. Gaza could have petitioned Egypt for statehood before Israel took it over in 1967. Since then, Palestinians have rejected offers that would have given their people the whole of Gaza. In this context, Israel cannot trust Hamas to agree to another ceasefire. In four major military conflicts between Hamas and Israel over the past 15 years, ceasefires have proven fragile. The most recent pause in fighting enabled the release of only around half of the Israeli hostages while permitting Hamas to regroup and rearm, prolonging the conflict. The human shield strategy of Hamas makes it is impossible for Israel to defeat this enemy without civilian loss.
Moreover, Israel wages war for reasons beyond national self-interest. The rise in global anti-Semitism demonstrates that Jews worldwide need the safety of a homeland. Many Arab countries are quietly wary of Hamas because they fear strengthening Iran, arousing further Islamic extremism and impeding any hope of peace in the Middle East.
Conclusion
WHO demonstrably applies an unreasonable and arguably unlawful standard of conduct to Israel. Mirroring the bigotry of the UN this behaviour sets Israel apart from other states by persistently painting it as a severe violator of health rights. The WHO’s actions in the 2023 war in Gaza exemplify this apartheid. They fan the flames of anti-Semitism worldwide by perpetuating anti-Israel falsehoods while ignoring Hamas’ responsibility for the ongoing conflict and the resultant hardships of its citizens. This longstanding, biased treatment of Israel demonizes the Jewish state, dehumanizes the Jewish people, and delegitimizes its right to continued existence. It damages the WHO’s credibility, escalates mistrust in justice, and impedes opportunities for diplomacy to work.
WHO has shown itself incapable of the internal reforms needed to remove systemic anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Little will change until it finds the will to introduce fair accountability structures, such as independent oversight. Only then can WHO, and indeed the UN, help to achieve a fair and lasting peace in the region.
Associate Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Dr Kira Bacal works in this Faculty’s Medical Programme Directorate to direct the transition of medical students onto hospital wards
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