Prof. Mitchell Schwaber, a native of Boston, made aliya in 1992 and is a professor at Tel Aviv University and Director of the National Unit for Infection Prevention at the Ministry of Health. Since 2017 he served as an advisor to the World Health Organization in the field of infection prevention and control in the European Union region. During the COVID-19 period he volunteered for hundreds of hours in the service of the World Health Organization.
This is the correspondence betrween Prof. Schwaber and the head of WHO. after October 7th. Arutz Sheva received his permission to post the letters in their entirety.
There is a lesson and model to emulate here in how a proud Jew defends Israel, standing up for the truth in these troubling and shocking times..
Letter I: Prof. Schwaber's Resignation, October 16, 2023
To: Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization Geneva, Switzerland
Dear Sir,
Since 2017, I have served as an advisor to WHO in infection prevention and control (IPC), at the Headquarters and European Regional levels. During the COVID years, I participated in several IPC groups, chaired a number of these, and volunteered hundreds of hours of service to WHO. I did this out of a sense of duty to world health, and with a feeling of pride that I was contributing to a humane organization that placed human rights, dignity and basic decency among its highest values.
No longer.
In its statement of 14 October, WHO noted that it "strongly condemns Israel's repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2000 inpatients in northern Gaza." The statement follows by one day the call for "immediate reversal of (the) Gaza evacuation order to protect health and reduce suffering." But no mention is made in either statement about the reasons for Israel's military operation. For that one would have to go back to the statement of 10 October, where the plea of WHO on the heels of the 7 October Hamas rampage of murder, torture, rape, mutilation and kidnapping is first and foremost for "an end to the hostilities."
Dr. Ghebreyesus, with all due respect, I must ask: what world do you inhabit? I ask this because it seems to me that it is far different from the world in which I live. The world in which Israelis have lived since the early morning hours of 7 October is one in which a band of terrorists, committed in word and deed to the annihilation of every Jew, breached our sovereign border, brutally and gleefully massacred over 1300 people, ranging in age from under 1 to over 80, maimed well over 3000 more, and, unconscionably, kidnapped at least 199 people, including toddlers and the injured and the frail elderly, with no word on their whereabouts or fate since. Some of those murdered were shot while their hands were tied behind them. Others, including babies, were burned alive. Young women were brutally raped and tortured before being stabbed to death. Entire families were wiped out by machine gun fire.
Surgeons treating the wounded and forensic pathologists tending to the corpses are on record saying that the abject brutality reflected in the wounds they are witnessing is unlike anything they have seen before.
And yet WHO believes that the proper response to this apocalyptic horror, the humane response, is to end the hostilities? To sue for peace and the safe return of the hostages (in your remarks yesterday opening the World Health Summit you qualified even that, calling only for the return of "civilian" hostages, implying that in WHO's eyes abducting Israeli soldiers is in some way acceptable), in the hope and belief that the Hamas terrorists holding them will suddenly embrace humanity and agree to their safe release, as you have asked? Or is it simply WHO's position that violence can never be justified, even in self-defense?
I understand and share the concern about the safety of having to evacuate hospitalized patients. But isn't that first and foremost the responsibility of Hamas, which as a matter of strategy embeds armaments and terrorist cells within, next to and underneath hospitals, as well as schools and other concentrations of innocent non-combatants? Where is WHO's condemnation of this age-old diabolical practice, which constitutes a war crime? And where in WHO's statements is there any mention of the over 6000 rockets fired into Israeli population centers over the past week, putting hospitalized patients throughout the country into harm's way, and in one case actually striking Barzilai Hospital in the southern city of Ashkelon? Israel, by contrast, is allowing time for hospitals to evacuate and thereby avoid harm. And should it then send ground troops in rather than pursue an all-aerial offensive, it will be putting its own troops at risk in order to minimize civilian casualties to the largest extent possible.
But I would like to return to the hostages, whom Hamas has threatened to publicly execute. Do not confuse them with prisoners of war. These are innocent people plucked by Hamas from the killing fields that they created last Saturday, ripped from the arms of their loved ones, and herded away to the terrifying unknown dungeons of Gaza. Their Hamas captors have historically, and presently, shown zero regard for the Geneva Convention. Do you have any idea what it feels like for a society to know that at least 199 of its innocent members – including sisters as young as 2 and 4 years old – are held in that state of captivity? No information about their welfare has been provided. Some have medical needs, including diabetes. Others are injured.
According to an eyewitness account, 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin had his arm blown off at the elbow before being driven away into captivity. His parents know nothing about whether his wound has been tended to in any way.
Here are pictures of some of the children missing and either known or presumed to have been kidnapped: Look at these faces, Dr. Ghebreyesus. Is it possible to imagine them in the hands of the monsters who attacked us last Saturday and not go insane? As a parent, I cannot.
If WHO wishes "for the immediate and safe delivery of medical supplies, fuel, clean water, food, and other humanitarian aid into Gaza," as well it should, it should begin by demanding that Hamas first release, unharmed, every last prisoner it kidnapped on 7 October. That, rather than condemning Israel for doing what it must to free its citizens, would be the humane statement to issue.
I would like to hope that you will find at least some of what I have written persuasive enough to change the tone and content of WHO's statements. I do believe that WHO has a potentially important role to play as a promoter of world health in regions of conflict. But it can do so only if it makes a clear distinction between good and evil, and follows that distinction to the logical conclusion that evil must be decisively defeated if good is to thrive. Like the Nazis, like ISIS, Hamas has shown the world that it is pure evil. It must be eliminated, and it has fallen to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to do the job.
No one here is eager to fight in Gaza, but as a society we overwhelmingly understand we must. Contrary to your remarks yesterday, Israel is not attacking Palestinian civilians, but carefully waging war against a brutal enemy that uses civilians as human shields. As British Colonel Richard Kemp, a veteran of armed conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, has declared, the IDF does more to safeguard civilian rights in combat zones "than any other army in the history of warfare." As a humanitarian, you would not want any other army on the face of the globe doing the essential job we are now doing. The decent, humane, moral stance for WHO to take, then, is to have our back.
Respectfully yours,
Mitchell J. Schwaber, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine, Tel Aviv University 6 Weizmann St. Tel Aviv Israel
Letter 2: Response from: PENDSE, Razia, WHO, October 28, 2023
Re: Suspension of work with WHO
Dear Prof Schwaber,
Thank you for the letter; as well as for how generously you are sharing your time and expertise in support of global public health and the work of World Health Organization.
The Director-General has seen your letter and has asked me to reply personally to you. He is profoundly concerned about the issues and perspectives you have shared.
Recently Dr Tedros addressed all 54 Member States of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe in public session and spoke about the conflict. He spoke about how the eruption of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory has shocked and saddened all of us. He said the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on the 7th of October that targeted Israeli civilians were horrific and unjustifiable. He spoke about the efforts WHO was making to support deliveries of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing. He repeated his appeal to both Israel and Hamas to abide by their obligations under international law to protect civilians and health care.
At the Regional Committee meeting, and elsewhere, he has reiterated that WHO is gravely concerned about the health and well-being of all civilians; those in Gaza, who are suffering from bombardment and siege, and those in Israel who are suffering from ongoing attacks. And he stressed that, as a United Nations agency, WHO is impartial, and is committed to supporting the health and well-being of all Israelis and all Palestinians.
Critically, during that meeting, and others, the Director-General also reiterated his call for the immediate and safe release of hostages seized and taken into Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups, among them children, older people and those who need urgent medical care.
Most recently, on October 25th, the Director-General met directly with families of people abducted from Southern Israel and heard first hand the tragedy, trauma and suffering they are facing. WHO released a statement the same day, calling for the immediate release of all the hostages, along with urgent access to each of them and delivery of medical care.
Taking these issues to heart, the DG is continuing his work with his senior team, including the Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, and the WHO Special Representative in Israel, with a specific focus on working with the national authorities in Israel to understand the physical and mental health needs of people in the country, and to offer WHO’s assistance and support.
WHO, under his leadership, remains focused on health for all, in the fullest sense of that principal, and doing so in all circumstances
On behalf of the Director General, we thank you, again, for all your contributions to the important area of Infection Prevention and Control. We hope that you might consider continuing to work with us, sharing your invaluable expertise and commitment to advance WHO’s mission to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.
Thanks and regards, Razia, Dr Razia Pendse Chef de Cabinet, World Health Organization 20 Avenue Appia, Geneva, Switzerland
Letter 3: Resignation stands
From: Mitchell J. Schwaber, MD, MSc, Professor of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel
To: Dr Razia Pendse, Chef de Cabinet World Health Organization Geneva, Switzerland
Dear Dr. Pendse,
First, I wish to thank you and the Director-General for the response to my letter of 16 October. I do not take for granted the fact that Dr. Tedros made it a priority to respond to the points I raised.
I am grateful to Dr. Tedros for meeting with the families of the hostages and for his call for the immediate release of the hostages and the granting of immediate access of the ICRC to them.
I am also gratified that his call now is for the release of all hostages, and not only civilian hostages as declared in his statement of 15 October at the World Health Summit.
And I am heartened by WHO's continued work with the national authorities in Israel to understand our needs and to offer assistance and support.
And yet, I still take issue in a profound way with WHO's position, for reasons I will outline below:
Terminology. WHO refers to Gaza as "the occupied Palestinian territory," when in fact Israel left Gaza completely in 2005. Since then we have neither a civilian nor a military presence in Gaza. Israel left Gaza so thoroughly that it even exhumed the human remains from Gaza's Jewish cemeteries at the time of disengagement. There is an established, internationally recognized border between Gaza and Israel.
Israel is not at war with "the occupied Palestinian territory," but with Hamas, the sovereign power in unoccupied Gaza. Terminology matters. The world listens to what you say.
Impartiality: Certain WHO statements belie the claim of impartiality. For example, your 14 October "condemnation" (which remains on your website) of Israel's call to civilians to evacuate northern Gaza. By providing advance notice to allow for evacuation prior to military activity in an area in which Hamas is deployed, Israel fulfilled its legal obligation under Article 19 of the Geneva Convention (IV) on Civilians, 1949. It should not be condemned by WHO for doing so.Another example: your 17 October condemnation of "the attack on Al Ahli Arab Hospital". Even on 17 October, there was no evidence that the hospital had been attacked (the "early reports" you cited that "indicate hundreds of fatalities and injuries" came from Hamas), and in subsequent days intelligence services of several western nations indicated it in fact had not been attacked but rather damaged by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad from Gaza.
There are consequences to referring to an "attack" on a hospital. Mass demonstrations took place throughout the Middle East following the (false) report of an Israeli attack, and leaders of several regional nations canceled their planned, important meetings with President Biden as a result of the public outcry. Yet when the truth was revealed, WHO did not issue a condemnation of the failed rocket launch, that was intended to kill civilians in Israel and instead put hospitalized patients and medical staff in Gaza in harm's way. On the contrary, your website continues to condemn "the attack."
While I understand the value of impartiality for an organization such as WHO in regional conflicts, I question the virtue of it in the current situation. Israel is not presently engaged in a battle over territory. Rather, this is a war that pits humane civilization against, as the Wall St. Journal has termed it, "nihilistic jihad." (Hamas Puts Its Pogrom on Video - WSJ). The enemy we are fighting videos and livestreams scenes of torture, rape, dismemberment, beheading, baby burning and mass murder, and proudly broadcasts it to its families back home, to the families of its victims and to the world at large. And Hezbollah, arrayed against us on our northern border, subscribes to the exact same ideology as Hamas and is no less motivated to carry it out. If we do not decisively win this war, i.e., if Hamas continues to exist as a functioning organization, not only will that call the continued existence of Israel into question, it will put all of western civilization at risk. So is there in fact virtue to WHO's impartiality in this situation?
Healthcare champions. WHO has positioned itself as an advocate and champion of healthcare institutions, the wounded and the sick worldwide. As such, there is logic to its call for both sides "to abide by their obligations under international law to protect civilians and health care." But that logic crumbles when only one side recognizes these obligations, or respects international law in any way.
If Hamas deliberately places its underground military headquarters at Al Shifa Hospital, and directs its terror operations from there , there is no way for Israel to succeed in battle without operating against these headquarters. This is not a new phenomenon. Hamas has been exploiting the safety provided by healthcare facilities for years relying on world pressure, and Israeli morality, to prevent military operations by Israel against these facilities.
Where was WHO's protest when this criminal practice began? You have people on the ground in Gaza. If healthcare facilities are being used as military bases, putting patients, families and medical staff in harm's way, why hasn't WHO been vehemently and effectively protesting this in every available forum and at every opportunity for all the years it's been carried out? If WHO is truly "committed to supporting the health and well- being of all….Palestinians," it should not stand in Israel's way as it does what it must to extricate Hamas from the healthcare facilities WHO is sworn to protect, after issuing every possible warning to evacuate and allowing far more than the initially allotted time to complete that evacuation.
Priorities. I cannot escape the tragic irony in WHO's calls for supplies to Gaza of fuel and other essential items. Are you aware how many thousands of missiles have been fired at Israeli population centers from Gaza since you initially called for Israel to allow Gaza to be supplied with fuel? Do you know how much fuel each missile requires? Does it make any sense at all for Israel to be asked by WHO to allow fuel into Gaza, when its population is under daily and nightly fuel-driven missile fire originating from Gaza? Would it not make more sense, if there is a shortage of fuel in Gaza, for Hamas to cease firing missiles, and instead use all the fuel it has for the civilian population of Gaza?
And is it in fact humane to demand that Israel allow supplies into Gaza when at least 239 innocent people, including infants, severely wounded, ill and elderly, have been held hostage for over 3 weeks, with no word on their whereabouts or well-being? Should they not be the world's first priority (or at least that of every country whose citizens are among those held)? If pressure on Hamas to release the hostages is eased by relaxation of the siege, is it morally right to call for relaxation? First, get the hostages home. Then pressure Israel to relax the siege.
Regarding my continued work with WHO: at the present all my energies, physical and emotional, are devoted to the national war effort, in my roles as citizen, healthcare provider, public health official and family member. At war's end, I will take stock of where Israel is, where I am, where WHO is, and make a decision.
Dr. Pendse, I truly believe the Director-General's heart is in the right place, and that WHO can serve a vital role in promoting global health. But if it is to succeed in its purpose, it is critical that it step up to the magnitude of the moment. The present moment demands moral clarity. If you need to be convinced of this, may I suggest you ask to be shown the Israel Defense Forces' 43-minute compilation of raw footage filmed by Hamas gunmen as they carried out their massacre.
Moral clarity is not to be found in impartiality in this case. It is to be found, by contrast, in the Biden Administration's response to the bloodbath. Thankfully, the Biden Administration is not alone.
As it pursues this war, Israel will abide by its "obligations under international law to protect civilians and health care." Hamas will not. War is always ugly. While innocents are inevitably and tragically killed, the Israeli military can be counted on to do all in its power to protect innocent life. Hamas will not. We are the good side in this war. The other side is pure evil. We are fighting for our very survival. If we lose, the rest of the world is next. We will not lose. WHO, in the name of global health, should stand with us.
Respectfully yours,
Mitchell J. Schwaber, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine, Tel Aviv University 6 Weizmann St. Tel Aviv Israel