CFI’s Parliamentary Chairman, Rt. Hon. Sir Eric Pickles MP, and CFI’s Honorary President, Lord Polak CBE, have condemned the World Health Organisation (WHO) for passing a politically motivated motion seeking to delegitimise Israel.
They have also expressed concern at the UK’s support for the motion which contradicts Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for an end to such “outrageous lectures on human rights that Israel receives at the United Nations”.
Sir Eric and Lord Polak said: “It is shameful that the World Health Organisation has yet again singled out Israel above any other country in the world, including those with grave human rights records. The UK’s support for this politically motivated attempt to delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state is deeply worrying. Prime Minister David Cameron has himself called for ‘an end to the outrageous lectures on human rights that Israel receives at the United Nations from the likes of Iran and North Korea’. Enough is enough”.
The WHO motion, which was co-sponsored by the Arab Group of States and the Palestinians, commissions a delegation to investigate and report on “the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory” and in “the occupied Syrian Golan”, and to place it on the agenda at next year’s meeting.
The proposal singling out Israel was reportedly the only country-specific resolution adopted among the 24 items that were debated and voted on at the assembly. The WHO opted to overlook some of the world’s chief human right violators.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany were among 107 countries that voted for the proposal during this week’s gathering in Geneva. Eight countries voted against the resolution and eight abstained, while 58 other countries taking part in the assembly were absent for the vote.
The UN and its many bodies have a long history of singling out Israel more than any other country in the world.
In 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted 20 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism, and only three resolutions on the rest of the world combined.
In May 2015, the WHO passed a resolution that singled out Israel as the chief violator of health rights in the world, by a vote of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 absent.
In an address to the Knesset in March 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron called for “an end to the outrageous lectures on human rights that Israel receives at the United Nations from the likes of Iran and North Korea; an end to the ridiculous situation where last year the United Nations General Assembly passed 3 times as many resolutions on Israel as on Syria, Iran and North Korea put together; no more excuses for the 32 countries in the United Nations who refuse to recognise Israel”.
