Palestinian Health Ministry Passes Off Fauxtography to WHO

Beyond the unfounded, vitriolic allegations, the pictures appearing in the Palestinian Health Ministry's report highlight the submission’s total lack of credibility. Here are some examples:

Post written by CAMERA’s Gidon Shaviv and originally published in Hebrew 

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision last week harshly critical of Israel for “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan” prompted Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid to describe it as antisemitic.

In preparation for WHO’s publication of the decision, the Palestinian Ministry of Health submitted a report to the international organization. Apart from the usual allegations propagated by various NGOs, the official Palestinian submission also includes the following outrageous charges:

• Israel is damaging prisoners’ health by “Holding prisoners in polluted areas, such as in the vicinity of the Dimona reactor or near areas in which waste from that reactor has been buried” (page 29).

• “In April 2013 the Russian newspaper Pravda accused Israel of injecting a number of Palestinian prisoners who were approaching their release date with cancer-causing viruses. Despite Israel’s rejection of the accusations made by the newspaper, the question remains: is it true that Israel is injecting prisoners with viruses?” (page 29)

• A Palestinian doctor contends that the Israeli practice of freezing terrorists’ bodies and insistence that they will only be returned to Palestinians if they are buried immediately “makes it impossible to ascertain whether the deceased individual’s organs have been stolen” (page 49).

Beyond the unfounded, vitriolic allegations, the pictures appearing in the Palestinian Health Ministry’s report highlight the submission’s total lack of credibility. Here are some examples:

On page 30, the following picture is meant to illustrate “Settlers attacking a Palestinian child while being observed by Israeli occupation forces”:

WHO1

However, as noted by blogger Israellycool two years ago when this picture first started to appear on social media, it is a Getty Images picture showing the eviction of Israeli settlers. The scene does not at all involve Palestinians.

Read the rest of this post here.

More from Guest/Cross Post
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *