In July, the staff of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine formulated a rebuttal to an anti-Israel resolution of the American Public Health Association (APHA), calling for “Improved Health in Palestinian Occupied Territory.” That resolution (C7) was defeated 74 to 25 this month at the association’s meeting in Boston.

Braun Professors Emeritus Elihu Richter and Ted Tulchinsky and their colleagues presented a 35-page rebuttal and initiated conversations with numerous public health professionals attending the meeting. A similar proposal at a previous meeting was narrowly defeated by a vote of 51-49.

“I reminded colleagues that we have been involved in joint work with Palestinians and others in the region going back 30 years in epidemiologic investigations, training, and advocacy,” relates Prof. Richter. “Like so many of my colleagues, I have been teaching, training, and working collaboratively with Palestinians. I work in Hadassah Hospital, a medical institution where the day-to-day reality is of Jewish and Arab patients receiving equal treatment by Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses. Many statements in C7 about the public health situation and its context are selective, discriminatory, and biased and therefore undermine C7’s calls for regional cooperation.”