Thread by @HillelNeuer

BREAKING: @WHO deviates from addressing COVID-19 to hold session condemning one single country as a violator of health rights: 🇮🇱 Israel.

Shame on France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland for backing PLO resolution co-sponsored by Syria, Cuba, Turkey & Qatar.

unwatch.org/who-meeting-de…

The vote was 82-14, with 40 abstentions & 38 absent.

✅ We applaud the Netherlands, Austria & Colombia for changing their votes this year to No.

✅ Voted No like last year: US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Honduras, Hungary & Israel.

However, amid a global pandemic, the minority of EU member states and other democracies who voted for the resolution should be ashamed:

❌ France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, India, Ireland, New Zealand and Luxembourg.

We 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.

Out of 34 items on the current world health assembly’s Agenda, only one, Item 25 targeting Israel, focused on a specific country. There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country, conflict, civil war or political impasse.

apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_f…

Nothing on Syria, where hospitals and other medical infrastructure are repeatedly and deliberately bombed by Syrian and Russian forces; not on war-torn Yemen, where 18 million are in dire need of health assistance;

and not on Venezuela, where the health system is in a state of collapse and 7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Today’s assault on Israel at the WHO promoted the lie that Israel is harming Palestinian health rights. The opposite is true. Despite the fact that the Palestinians have their own health system, and under the Oslo II Peace Accord it is the Palestinian Authority which is...

responsible for vaccinating their population, Israel has vaccinated over 100,000 Palestinian workers since March as well as donating thousands of vaccine doses for Palestinian medical workers.

Israeli medical teams coordinated with Palestinian medical professionals to provide training and assistance. Israel transferred medical equipment and has trained dozens of Palestinian doctors, nurses and medical personnel from Gaza before the Palestinian Authority ceased...

coordination in May 2020, putting more pressure on their health care system during a pandemic. Moreover, it’s particularly absurd for the WHO to enact a resolution effectively accusing Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, while the Director-General’s...

report clearly states that they have full access to universal health care under the Israeli health maintenance organizations, including COVID testing, medical care, contact tracing and vaccination.