Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a barrage of criticism aimed at the World Health Organisation (WHO) over its early response to the outbreak of the novel respiratory disease, the agency has now been slammed for allegedly manifesting a political prejudice towards Israel, reports Fox News.
The United Nations agency, which focuses on global health, issues regular coronavirus situation reports, where the State of Israel is listed as being in the "European Region" alongside Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. Its geographical neighbours, including Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, however, are all categorised as being in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
The "Occupied Palestinian Territory" is listed under its own category - "territories".
There has not been an official response from WHO to the report.
Brett Schaefer, international affairs senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, was cited as saying this falls in line with an "anti-Israel bias… widespread in the UN system due to the historical hostility of Muslim nations to Israel and support for the Palestinians".
Regarding the barrage of stinging criticism that has been targeted at the World Health Organisation by Washington, alongside a threat to temporarily freeze funding over its early handling of the pandemic pending internal review, Schaefer added:
"At a minimum, the US should demand that the WHO conduct an independent, external investigation into the WHO response to COVID-19 and the potential influence of China over its decisions."
The expert emphasised that a review was required into WHO policies and its International Health Regulations to enable it to respond more quickly to emerging pandemics.
The WHO's Alleged Political Slant
In an opinion piece on 20 April, The Jerusalem Post slammed the agency, stating that it "routinely singles out Israel and condemns them for supposed human rights violations, revealing the organisation's political agenda," while turning a blind eye to health catastrophes or persistent unrest in other countries.
According to the Geneva-based watchdog UN Watch, as far back as in 2017 "out of 21 items on the meeting's Agenda, only one — Item No. 14 against Israel —focused on a specific country. There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country," while a favourable report on Israel over its cooperation on a WHO mission to the Golan Heights was “buried by the agency".
Critics of the WHO argue that against the backdrop of the pandemic, the agency has been demonstrating a “political slant” against Israel while extolling China’s response to the outbreak, despite a body of evidence reportedly showing that Beijing had attempted to cover up the scale of the threat.
This comes as US government officials are now conducting a full-scale investigation into reports of the coronavirus having escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, instead of spreading from a “wet market” there.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump threatened to freeze funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying it "missed the call" on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US is the agency’s top donor; its contributions in 2019 exceeded $400m, but Washington blasted the WHO for its “very China-centric" approach, as Donald Trump claimed it had caved to Beijing's efforts months earlier to minimise the gravity of the coronavirus threat.
"The WHO really blew it," tweeted the US President on 7 April.
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
In response, the World Health Organisation officials on 8 April dismissed accusations of being "China-centric" and emphasised that the current pandemic developments were not the time to cut funding.
