More on The Lancet’s Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Sickness

On July 23rd, the medical journal The Lancet published a mendacious “open letter” leveling false charges against Israel’s actions during Operation Protective Edge. At the time, CAMERA countered the allegations with the facts and added:

This is not surprising coming from The Lancet which has a sad history of publishing anti-Israel pieces, some by the very same authors who wrote this one. CAMERA has documented a number of these in the past. Richard Horton, the journal’s editor, has also exhibited an anti-Israel bias in other publications.

Last week, The Telegraph, published in the United Kingdom where The Lancet is based, ran an article outlining the anti-Israel and frankly anti-Semitic views held by some of the open letter’s authors:

Dr Swee Ang, an orthopaedic surgeon, and Dr Manduca, a professor of genetics at the University of Genoa in Italy – who are both members of pro-Palestine NGOs – sent round-robin emails to their contacts promoting a video entitled “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix”.

The video features an extended anti-Semitic rant by [former KKK Grand Wizard David] Duke, in which he claims that “the Zionist Matrix of Power controls Media, Politics and Banking” and that “some of the Jewish elite practices racism and tribalism to advance their supremacist agenda”.

Dr Ang wrote: “This is a shocking video please watch. This is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!”

In another email, Dr Manduca forwarded a message alleging that the Boston marathon bombings were in fact carried out by Jews. “Let us hope that someone in the FBI is smart enough to look more carefully at the clues in Boston and find the real culprits behind these bombings instead of buying the Zionist spin”, it said.
[…]
Moreover, Dr Mads Gilbert, a third author of the letter, gave an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in 2001 in which he said that the 9/11 atrocities were as a result of Western foreign policy, and that he supported terror attacks in that “context”.

Much of this information was brought to light, and to the attention of The Telegraph, by NGO Monitor. NGO Monitor has long been working on this issue, last year publishing a monograph, “NGO Medical Malpractice: The Political Abuse of Medicine, Morality and Science.”

Despite the obvious bias and bigotry of the open letter’s authors, Lancet editor Richard Horton told The Telegraph, “It’s utterly irrelevant. It’s a smear campaign.” He added, “I don’t honestly see what all this has to do with the Gaza letter. I have no plans to retract the letter.”

Further, several of the authors have financial interests that should disqualify them from writing on the subject or at the very least should have been disclosed to Lancet readers. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East notes:

Two of the co-authors have affiliations with pro-Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In fact that barely scratches the surface in terms of the potentially biasing conflicts. For one example, the letter’s first author, Paolo Manduca received funding from several anti-Israel NGOs including Interpal, which has been designated as a terrorist entity by the governments of the United States, Canada and Australia. US Federal authorities describe the organization as a global clearinghouse channeling money to Hamas and a BBC investigation came to the same conclusion. Interpal is a founding member of the so-called “Union of Good,” an umbrella organization, which funds Islamic terrorists in Gaza. Its leader, Yussef al- Qaradawi, is a notorious jihadist who has publically lauded Hitler for “putting Jews in their place” and has said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “We must plant the love of death and the love of martyrdom in the Islamic nation.” The organization actively encourages Palestinian children to become martyrs and suicide bombers. Manduca not only receives funding from Interpal but also raises money for it.

Given these facts, it is impossible to take issue with the assertions of Professor Sir Mark Pepys, director of the Wolfson Drug Discovery Unit at the University College of London, who wrote, “Horton’s behaviour in this case is consistent with his longstanding and wholly inappropriate use of The Lancet as a vehicle for his own extreme political views. It has greatly detracted from the former high standing of the journal.”

If you have fifteen minutes and a strong stomach, you can watch the hate-filled David Duke conspiracy-theory video circulated by some of the Gaza letter authors by clicking here.

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