Israel Calls Out Médecins Sans Frontières over Sympathy for Terrorist ‘Colleague’ Killed in Gaza

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Adel Hana / Associated Press)
Adel Hana / Associated Press
Joel B. Pollak

Israel slammed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or “Doctors Without Borders,” on Tuesday as the humanitarian organization mourned the death of its “colleague,” Fadi Al-Wadiya, who was also an Islamic Jihad terrorist in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Tuesday that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had eliminated Fadi Al-Wadiya, whom it identified as a senior Islamic Jihad official responsible for directing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians:

Earlier today (Tuesday), an IAF aircraft directed by IDF intelligence struck and eliminated the terrorist Fadi Al-Wadiya, who served as a significant operative in the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.

As part of his role, Fadi Al-Wadiya developed and advanced the terrorist organization’s rocket array and was a central figure in the terrorist organization’s knowledge of electronics and chemistry.

The IDF published a video of the airstrike:

MSF responded by protesting the killing, saying that Fadi Al-Wadiya was just a physiotherapist “on his way to work”:

Al-Wadiya was killed along with five other people, including three children, near an MSF clinic. He was cycling to work at the time, on his way to provide medical care to others who had been injured. Al-Wadiya was a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three who joined MSF in 2018.

“Killing a health care worker while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza is beyond shocking,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF operations manager for Palestine. “It’s cynical and abhorrent.”

A similar claim was made by a journalist during a State Department briefing with spokesperson Matthew Miller on Tuesday, quoting the MSF statement (original emphasis):

QUESTION: Yeah. First, I just want to start off, see if I could ask you for a reaction to Médicins sans Frontières saying that one of their colleagues, Fadi al-Wadiya, was killed in an attack this morning. The attack killed five other people, including three children. Do you have any comment on that?

MR MILLER: So obviously, we mourn the loss of any civilian life. I don’t have any particulars with regard to that specific attack, but obviously, we don’t want to see any civilians killed in this conflict. And that’s one of the reasons why we continue to pursue a ceasefire.

The IDF responded to MSF with a post on X:

There is a precedent for doctors living double lives as terrorists. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, the co-founder of Hamas, was a pediatrician; Ahmed Al Jamal, a 73-year-old doctor, held three of the Israeli hostages rescued earlier this month.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer noted in a briefing Wednesday morning that MSF “were happy to overlook” Fadi Al-Wadiya’s terror connections. He quipped that “maybe MSF shared their hiring criteria with UNRWA,” referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, several of whose members allegedly took part in the October 7 terror attacks, and whose employees allegedly celebrated news of the terror attack as it emerged.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Photo: file

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