Avraham (Russell) Shalev is a lawyer and senior research fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.
During the US President's recent trip to the Middle East, the region's leaders lined up to impress him. The Qataris gifted President Trump a private jet worth 400 million dollars. Syrian leader Al-Julani reportedly transferred the Eli Cohen archive to Israel as a gesture to the American President. The Saudis greeted Trump with a lavish ceremony resplendent with pomp and grandeur.
The South African President told Trump he was sorry he had no plane to give him, to which Trump responded: "I wish you did. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it".
What has Israel done to show its greatest friend it knows how to give as well as request things ?
Fortunately, Israel has the opportunity to join an important US initiative, one that is called for regardless of Trump: withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO).
A week ago, Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy called on Health Ministers across the world to take the American withdrawal from the WHO as a wake-up call. The fact that President Trump attempted to leave the organization at the end of his first term and upon taking office again declared a withdrawal once more, illustrates how important this is to him.
Trump accuses the WHO of being unduly influenced by China, cooperating with the communist regime in covering up the origins of the Covid-19 virus. The Americans also claim the organization demands disproportionate, "unfairly onerous payments from the United States". Despite the fact that a number of governments voiced support for the American move, only Argentine has so far joined in actually withdrawing from the WHO.
During the "Swords of Iron" war, the WHO and its Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spread the infamous libel that Israel is destroying Gaza's healthcare system. The WHO played a major role in covering up Hamas' systematic takeover and abuse of hospitals in Gaza as terror headquarters.
Using Gazan hospitals as terror bases is not a new phenomenon. Already back in the 2008 Operation Cast Lead, the IDF discovered Hamas had blocked off major wards in the Al-Shifa hospital to use as operational headquarters. Former USAID Mission Director in Judea and Samaria Dave Harden published in November 2023 that during his 2014 tenure it was widely understood that Hamas operated from within the hospital.
Freed hostages testified to the symbiosis between Hamas and the Gazan healthcare system; the performance of torture and surgery on them without anesthetics in Gazan hospitals; and their concealment in and under hospital buildings. According to freed hostage Emily Damari, she was operated on with no pain killer in Al-Shifa by a surgeon who introduced himself as "Dr. Hamas".
WHO director Ghebreyesus abused his platform to condemn Israel in critical forums - the UN Security Council and conferences in Lebanon and Qatar. Between March and April 2024, the IDF systematically fought Hamas terrorists in the Al-Shifa area. During this operation the army arrested 500 known terrorists and 400 suspects, and took out 200 more. Among those eliminated was Faiq Mabhouh, head of the Operations Directorate of Hamas' Internal Security.
However, when Israeli forces eradicated this terrorist enclave, Ghebreyesus posted a particularly hypocritical condemnation on his X account: "Hospitals should never be battlegrounds. We are terribly worried about the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, which is endangering health workers, patients and civilians."
On April 6, 2024, the WHO headed a UN multi-agency mission to investigate the destruction at Al-Shifa and issued a report that described it as an "empty shell". The word Hamas is conspicuously absent from the entire report. Readers are left with no explanation as to who Israel was fighting there or why the hospital was besieged. This is not a mistake but a deliberate cover up of the truth.
The WHO also continues to hide the truth about the Kamal Adwan hospital, where 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were apprehended, some of whom had participated in the October 7 massacre. One of the Nukhba (elite unit) terrorists revealed that Hamas used the hospital because it was a "safe zone". Fox News reported that hostages were held there. Yet the WHO demanded the release of the hospital's director, a Hamas colonel, without mentioning that fact.
Israel's close ties to the United States are a strategic asset. Our greatest friend has already made it clear how vital it considers the withdrawal from the WHO to be. As despicable as the organization is now, the situation will only get worse after the United States withdraws.
Israel must proactively join the Americans and withdraw from the WHO as well. Doing so will significantly contribute to weakening an organization that has lost its moral compass and collaborated with tyrannical regimes and terrorist organizations.
