In July 2014, in the midst of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and the IDF response, The Lancet medical journal infamously published an “Open letter for the people in Gaza”.
The authors of this diatribe labelled Israeli academics as “complicit” in “war crimes”, and used similar terms in demonising the Jewish state. Some were active supporters of the antisemitic campaigns of David Duke.
Hundreds of academics — including many British physicians — denounced that letter and The Lancet, noting that it “consists of numerous vicious and deliberately inflammatory falsehoods, omissions and abusive dishonesty, which have no place in any responsible publication.”
In parallel, they called for the resignation of the editor Richard Horton who, long before this letter, had allowed the journal to be used as a platform for anti-Israel campaigning. As the criticism grew, Mr Horton reluctantly expressed regret and temporarily refrained from publishing additional screeds targeting Israel.
However, in the wake of the latest round of Gaza violence, The Lancet — still with the same editor — resumed publishing anti-Israel polemics, in clear violation of medical ethics.
On November 14, 2018, the journal published a highly tendentious attack by Rita Giacaman, one of the signatories of the 2014 Gaza “open letter”.
In it, Ms Giacaman suggests that Palestinian terrorism directed at Israeli civilians is justified, proclaiming “Palestinians militarily occupied by Israel are enduring chronic exposure to Israeli violence (including threats to their survival) and are rightfully resisting oppression and injustice.”
Once again, Ms Giacaman is conspicuously silent on the protracted abuses of medical facilities by Hamas in order to wage war on Israel and carry out terrorist attacks against its citizens.
In addition, a few days after The Lancet published her new propaganda attack, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) revealed that it had thwarted a Hamas plan to exploit the entry of Palestinians into Israel for medical procedures in order to coordinate terror attacks.
Moreover, Ms Giacaman posits an ideological test for medical partnerships between Israelis and Palestinians, declaring, “Some Israelis (and some Palestinians) are not on the side of justice, and we do not want any collaboration with these people.”
She rejects recent calls by Israeli doctors for “improved collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis to advance Palestinian health”, highlighting her animus towards Israel, in contrast to any commitment to improving health care for Palestinians.
Tellingly, she also disregards the large number of Palestinian medical professionals working with Israeli doctors, including training programmes between the Palestinian Ministry of Health and Hadassah medical centre in Jerusalem.
Instead, Ms Giacaman embraces an anti-peace line, including the discriminatory BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) agenda.
In a global environment already saturated by conflict and violence, the question for the publishers and readers of The Lancet is why the editor of this medical publication is again providing a platform for an agenda of hate that is entirely antithetical to the Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm”?
Professor Gerald Steinberg is president of the think tank NGO Monitor
