Human Rights Expert: 'WHO has gaping hole in goals: The health of Jews'

Professor Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the President of the Human Rights Voices human rights organization, spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the reports that US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) on the first day of his new administration.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has a gaping hole in its performance outcomes: the health of Jews," Prof. Bayefsky said. "From the minute Palestinian terrorists tortured, mutilated, murdered and utterly destroyed the health of Jews in the Jewish state on October 7, World Health Organization officials blamed the victims. They called it an 'escalation of violence' that must be seen in the 'the context of ongoing occupation, blockade of the Gaza Strip, political division, and long-term displacement of Palestinian refugees.'”

She recounted the WHO's response to the outbreak of the war. "On October 8, 2023, while the IDF was still battling genocidal terrorists within Israel, and the full humanitarian horror of the mass atrocities was still emerging, and weeks before Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza, WHO officials were calling for a 'halt' to 'hostilities.' It was a direct denial of Israel’s right of self-defense and the duty to save Israeli lives."

"In the fall of 2023, the WHO Executive Board sprang into action to hold a country-specific special session for the first time in its history. Chairing the session on December 10, 2023, was Hamas’s bankroller and host, Qatar. The subject was: 'the health situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.' The health situation of the thousands of Israelis maimed and violated, the hundreds of thousands displaced, and the millions deeply traumatized (and still under rocket fire) by the October 7 terror attacks warranted no such WHO special session. WHO’s Executive Board adopted a resolution – focused on 'the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.' The resolution made no mention of the Israeli hostages and their horrific health conditions," she said.

Moreover, "From October 7 through December 2024, WHO has issued 52 'emergency situation reports' on 'Gaza Hostilities 2023/2024.' To put this in perspective, WHO has issued only 6 'emergency situation reports' on the humanitarian disaster in Sudan since April 2023, in which at least 27,000 civilians have been killed and 14.7 million people need medical assistance, according to WHO itself."

Prof. Bayefsky stated that "The WHO – that claims to be the lead organization championing a safe and healthy life for all – has systematically undermined the right to life and health of Israelis. It has: denied Israel’s right of self-defense; inverted Palestinian perpetrator and Israeli victim; morally equated genocidal terrorists with a democratic state based on the rule of law, and Palestinian terrorism to Israel’s counter-terrorism efforts; issued blood libels – slanderous unsubstantiated and inflammatory claims – against the Jewish state; repeatedly minimized the Palestinian atrocities of October 7; ignored Hamas’s responsibility for embedding itself in Gazan hospitals; and systematically misrepresented the facts and history of the conflict."

"Of course, the shameful, appalling and discriminatory record of the WHO did not begin on October 7. The WHO’s annual World Health Assembly only has one country-specific agenda item – on 'Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.' The World Health Assembly adopts only one country-specific resolution every year – bashing Israel. In short, the World Health Organization is an embarrassment to world health," she said.

On October 8, 2023, one day after the massacre, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu tweeted, "We are gravely concerned by the continuing civilian loss of life and casualties in the rapidly escalating violence in #Israel and Gaza. @WHO calls for urgent steps to: - protect and safeguard civilians, health workers and health facilities - halt the hostilities #NotATarget."

The same, day, the WHO published an Emergency Situation report on the Arab-Israeli conflict in which it wrote, "The escalation of violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel comes in the context of ongoing occupation, blockade of the Gaza Strip, political division, and longterm displacement of Palestinian refugees, which have contributed to existing humanitarian needs and vulnerabilities before the current escalation."