Something that doesn’t come up often enough when discussing the complicity of Germany’s governmental, cultural and academic institutions in the whitewashing of Israel’s violence is the complicity of its scientific and medical institutions – institutions we should hope have a fundamental respect for humanity at the core of their values. Sadly, as we’ve grown used to in Germany, this is not something that we can count on – at least not when it comes to Palestine.
In February earlier this year, Germany’s most important medical institution, Charité Universitätsmedizin, announced the creation of a new innovation center. “With the establishment of an ARC Innovation Center” the announcement reads “Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) are creating a new organizational framework to advance medical innovations rapidly and in a targeted manner.” This, however, is not just the result of a collaboration with the BIH but, most importantly, with Israel’s own most important medical institution: Sheba Medical Center – where the ARC concept itself was developed and, according to its website, has been so successful that “Sheba’s ARC is now establishing innovation centers in London, Berlin, Singapore, Australia, Canada and the United States.”
Sheba is not only one of the world’s top hospitals and what your friend’s entrepreneur friend would call a “hub of healthcare innovation”, it works closely with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) providing them with treatment, training and rehabilitation – even serving as an equipment distribution center for IDF medical units. It is also the recipient of huge donations from close Putin acquaintance, illegal settlement funder and target of international sanctions Roman Abramovich; as well as from Friends of the IDF (FIDF) a US nonprofit whose list of “friends” and major donors include Trump and Netanyahu billionaire supporters Miriam Adelson and Larry Ellison – Sheba and the FIDF, in fact, partnered to create a center where IDF soldiers with PTSD from taking part in war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon receive mental healthcare.
With all of this one would expect management at Charité to reconsider its collaboration agreements with Sheba, right? Well, dear reader, one would be wrong. I was initially made aware of Charité’s collaboration with Sheba by a Charité employee. “The question of collaboration with Israel increasingly reminds me of how, in many religions, even questioning the existence or actions of a deity is considered a deadly sin. Criticism is not seen as part of democratic discourse, but as completely illegitimate” she expressed at the start of our conversation. Particularly difficult for her to accept has been the fact that “there has been no clear statement from Charité and BIH following Israel’s illegal attack on Iran, nor any meaningful distancing from the genocidal war in Gaza or the settler violence in the West Bank.”
This is in “stark contrast” to the general response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, she pointed out. “Researchers collaborating with Russian institutions were immediately scrutinized, and Russian employees often became targets of suspicion.” It seemed to her that “all of a sudden, institutions argued that scientific cooperation could not be separated from state violence.” Yet in the case of Israel “the principle that governments must be differentiated from institutions and individuals is invoked selectively” it is only used “when it serves political convenience” she said. “This is the kind of inconsistency that really undermines the credibility of an institution’s claims about universal human rights, ethics, and neutrality.”
And although she recognizes the value and importance of international cooperation between medical and scientific institutions, she cannot agree with “a framework in which Israel will profit from innovations and research supported through the ARC Center at Charité” as they could “ultimately benefit other structures linked to the state while its human right violations continue without accountability or any kind of of consequences.”
To all of this a PR person for Charité might argue that, as stated in its website, Sheba’s guiding creed is “hope without boundaries” and that proof of this is that it takes in Palestinians and people from neighboring Arab countries for treatment. This is objectively true, but in the case of Palestinians, what they would be ignoring completely – as pointed out in this great report in Jewish Currents – is that in accordance with Article 56 of the 4th Geneva Convention “Israel as the occupying power has the primary responsibility to ensure respect, protection, and fulfillment of the right to health of Palestinians in Gaza” and not just in Gaza, but in the illegally occupied West Bank as well. Talking about “hope without boundaries” is repainting a responsibility under international law as an act of kindness – this is without mentioning that most of the expenses are actually covered by the Palestinian Authority, that Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure has been practically wiped out by the IDF, and the dystopian reality of securing a permit to get treatment outside of Gaza in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Israel, a reality that is known to be exploited by Israel’s intelligence services as a way to get Palestinians to collaborate with them.
By not reconsidering the partnership it started with Sheba back in 2022, Charité has decided to partner with a medical establishment that, according to important members of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, has barely criticized, much less opposed, what even Israeli scholars like Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg – as well as Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem – have called a genocide. It has decided to indirectly associate itself with organizations like FIDF, billionaire supporters of both Trump and Netanyahu, and corrupt Russian oligarchs who directly fund settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.In helping Sheba sell its illusion of “hope without boundaries” Charité is directly engaging in what anthropologist Avram Bornstein calls “medical hasbara” and whitewashing the realities of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, its genocide in Gaza and its wars in Iran and Lebanon.
