Horton Smears Anew

In 2019, five years after a petition first appeared, demanding that a letter in The Lancet accusing the IDF of “massacres” in Gaza be retracted, it seemed that the journal’s editor, Richard Horton, no longer bore ill-will toward Israel. By then Horton had visited Israel and seen how its medical system provides equally excellent care to Israeli Jews and Arabs, as well as quietly administering to the medical needs of thousands of Syrians wounded in that country’s civil war. Some of those who had signed the protest letter in 2015 believed that Horton, and The Lancet, had indeed turned a corner, and there would be no more malignant anti-Israel bias at the journal. Here is what several of them wrote in a joint letter to The Lancet:

We wholeheartedly endorse Richard Horton’s timely Comment, “in which he addresses the global rise of antisemitism particularly evident in Europe and the USA. Horton stresses the need to educate medical students and health-care professionals of the evil and disastrous consequences of ignoring the historical reality of the Holocaust. It will remind the world, 75 years on, that the call Never Again remains highly relevant!

We share Horton’s concern that to both ignore and intellectually disengage from the horrors of the Holocaust contributes to antisemitism. We fully embrace his Comment as it reflects the thrust of our original strong criticism five years ago of The Lancet publishing the Correspondence by Paola Manduca and colleagues.

We felt this Correspondence was a clear manifestation of antisemitism, disguised as destructive and inappropriate distortion of Israel’s survival conflicts. We believe it should never have been published, let alone in The Lancet.

Manduca and her colleagues’ Correspondence was considered by many as profoundly antisemitic and anti-Israel, demonising the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during the last Gaza conflict….

Now, five years on, this has been an effective solidarity exercise, demonstrating the ability of an intellectually diverse global community to bond and send a very strong moral message to the publisher. This brings us back to Horton’s statesman-like Comment, which we applaud. It has the potential to serve as an important turning point and to bring closure to the stand of more than 4000 clinical and basic medical scientists and health professionals who withdrew their previously strong support for The Lancet and other Elsevier journals until this unfair bias against Israel was repaired….

Those hopeful souls, counting on Horton having seen the light after his trip to visit medical facilities in Israel, and his pretense of contrition, turned out to be wrong. He had not changed, and the latest letter he allowed to be published in The Lancet in July of this year contained the most outrageous of any of the charges that have yet been made against Israel – the the IDF may have killed 186,000 Gazans.

Horton had not changed, after all. His anti-Israel bias reappeared with this latest display of malevolence. What kind of person would allow such a charge to be made in The Lancet, well-aware that the medical journal’s prestige would lend credence to this preposterous and monstrous charge?

Richard Horton is that kind of person. And on April 6, he made clear in a piece he published in The Lancet that he believes that the Israeli government is responsible for the deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza. Under a thin veneer of judiciousness — he does condemn Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, and also deplores the taking of hostages — his anti-Israel animus still shines through. Here is that piece, where Horton smears anew:

It is a puzzling question why the international community has allowed, even enabled through its passivity, the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza. Half of Gaza’s 2·2 million inhabitants now face catastrophic levels of food insecurity. The Israeli Government blames Hamas. Many others hold the Israel Defence Forces liable. It does not matter where the culpability lies.

Yes, it matters very much.

What matters today is the incomprehensible cruelty of leaving civilians to starve in conditions of utter destitution.

Israel has sent 40,000 truckloads of food into Gaza. It is Hamas that has prevented the orderly distribution of that aid once it is inside the Strip, stealing much of it for its own members, their families, and clans.

The UN Security Council vote on March 25, 2024, to demand an immediate ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war was too little, too late. UN Resolution 2728 deplored all attacks, violence, and hostilities against civilians. It pointed out that taking hostages was against international law. It demanded “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”, together with “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” and “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance”. Israeli Government representatives called the vote “shameful”. There is no need for contrition. The world’s governments have stood by while Gazan hospitals have been (and continue to be) besieged, health and humanitarian workers killed, and an entire population brutalised.

The IDF has “brutalized” no one. It has not besieged hospitals, but rather, has attacked Hamas combatants who hide inside many of the hospitals, along with their weapons and rocket launchers. At Al-Shifa Hospital, for example, the largest in Gaza, the IDF killed or captured 200 members of Hamas, and managed not to harm a single member of the medical staff or a single patient during the operation.

The excuse offered for international inaction has been that the Israeli Government had the right to defend itself after the savage terrorist atrocities of Oct 7, 2023. The Israeli Government did, indeed, have the right to defend itself. But that defense had to adhere to the rules of war—prohibited means and methods of warfare may not be used; only legitimate targets may be singled out; even if an attack is legitimate, it must fulfil the principle of proportionality; and the attacking party must take all feasible precautions to spare the civilian population….

What are nine million leaflets, 15 million text messages, and 16 million robocalls, all warning civilians to leave areas about to be targeted?

Physician, heal thyself? No, quite clearly he’s incapable of that. Let his latest hate crime — publishing the monstrous accusation by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf that the Jewish state may have killed as many as 186,000 people in Gaza— be the last straw. How many thousands of physicians and medical researchers around the world are prepared to go further than they did in 2015, and this time demand Richard Horton’ resignation? He has blighted us long enough.