WHO Coronavirus Meeting Turns Into Israel-Bashing Session

The World Health Organization on Thursday held a four-hour session on Israel’s alleged violation of health rights in the Palestinian Authority territories as well as of Druze in the Golan Heights.

Representatives from dozens of countries gave speeches accusing Israel of harming health rights, according to U.N. Watch.

In a 78 to 14 vote, with 32 abstentions and 56 countries absent, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution requiring the same debate be held next year and for the head of the WHO to ready another report on health conditions in the Gaza Strip, Yehudah, Shomron, East Yerushalayim and the Golan Heights.

The resolution was sponsored by Cuba, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinians.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of the U.N. Watch, condemned the “cynical politicization of the world’s top health agency at the expense of focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and other vital global health priorities and emergencies.”

He said the claim that Israel is violating health rights is a “lie” and that “the opposite is true,” noting thousands of Palestinians receive care at Israeli hospitals on a regular basis and that Syrians wounded in that country’s civil war were treated in Israel.

Neuer also railed at the WHO for not having an agenda item on any single country other than Israel and called out a number of states that voted in favor of the resolution.

“Amid a global pandemic, the minority of EU member states and other democracies who voted for the resolution should be ashamed, including France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Japan, India, New Zealand, Luxembourg and Monaco,” he said.

Among the countries that voted against the resolution were the United States, Britain, Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, Germany, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Slovenia, Cameroon, Swaziland and Micronesia.