NYC health department staffers hold meeting accusing Israel of genocide

During the hour-long meeting, none of the participants mentioned the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel or the reason for Israel’s retaliation.

By Dinah Bucholz, Jewish Breaking News

Perhaps unsurprising coming from a health department whose Board of Health officially declared racism a public health crisis in 2021, staff from the New York City Health department formed a group called the “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group,” which held its first meeting on Tuesday at the Health Department building in Long Island City to discuss Israel’s “genocide” against Gaza.

A Health Department employee said that flyers advertising the meeting were posted near the elevators in the department’s building.

Video from the meeting shows a presenter reading a mission statement for the group, saying, “We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

A slideshow also presented the Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group’s mission statement, explaining that the group was created to be a “cross-divisional effort led by Division Equity Liaisons (DELs) and action teams from Disease Control.”

During the hour-long meeting, none of the participants mentioned the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel or the reason for Israel’s retaliation.

Instead, they discussed the goal of the meeting, which is to understand the impact of global oppression on “the health and well-being of priority communities in NYC vis-à-vis trauma, violence and discrimination” as well as on their own colleagues, a slideshow of the meeting revealed.

Weeam Hammoudeh, a professor at Hunter College and a committee member of the Palestine Global Mental Health Network, presented at the meeting.

She criticized Israel for treating Arab Israelis like second-class citizens.

“So Palestinian citizens of Israel are citizens but they’re not considered nationals of the state so they’re more restricted in terms of the areas that they can live in and then some like jobs and other opportunities also require military service, and that creates another set of sort of disparities in outcomes,” she said.

She also criticized Israel for the “forced displacements and dispossession” of Arabs and the difficult circumstances they face living in the “occupied territories.”

Mark Botnick, a former New York City official who served in former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, questioned the relevance of global oppression to the NYC Department of Health, whose job is to take care of the health and well-being of NYC residents.

“This is shocking,” he said. “If these NYC Health Department staffers truly believe Israel is committing genocide, will they now boycott the Israeli pharmaceutical companies that make lifesaving drugs New Yorkers depend on? Or is this just performative politics that has no place in a taxpayer-funded public health agency?”

“Who knew that DOH is turning to foreign policy? I guess I missed that one on the campaign,” he added in a jab at newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has accused Israel of genocide, supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel and vowed to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he steps foot in New York City.

Yael Halaas, president of the American Jewish Medical Association, also harshly criticized the meeting.

“This is a meeting using New York City Department of Health resources that promote libel against the Jewish people,” she said.

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