The World Health Organization has distanced itself from a string of unsanctioned public remarks by Michel Thieren, its representative in Israel. Thieren accused the UN of enabling antisemitism and compared world leaders’ discussions on Palestinian statehood to making a deal with a “Nazi devil”.
“The opinions expressed do not in any way reflect the official position of the World Health Organization,” the WHO said in a statement responding to questions from The New Humanitarian, adding that Thieren’s comments were made in a personal capacity.
In an article Thieren contributed to the French-language news outlet Tribune Juive, he wrote that the UN General Assembly’s discussions about Palestinian statehood in September were “a disturbing echo of the 1938 Munich Agreement, where states made a pact with the Nazi devil under the guise of good offices for peace”.
He wrote that allegations of famine and genocide in Gaza are products of “statistical and legal manipulations”, similar to Nazi Germany’s antisemitic Nuremberg Laws.
Thieren further argued that UN leaders’ assertions that “7 October did not happen in a vacuum” – something UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in late 2023 – “offered ample pretexts for the pandemic of antisemitism to spread”. Thieren did not mention Guterres by name.
In a speech in June, Thieren called the Hamas-led attacks against Israel in October 2023 the “greatest pogrom of the twenty-first century”. During a 20 October interview with the French-language podcast Mosaïque, he said: “There is no possible context for the Hamas murder”, referring to the 7 October 2023 attacks, in which around 1,200 people in Israel – the majority civilians – were killed and more than 250 others taken hostage.
The Israeli government and its supporters frequently deploy Nazi analogies to rebut criticism of atrocities against Palestinians. After South Africa brought charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2023, an Israeli government spokesperson said South Africa was “abetting the modern heirs of the Nazis”.
Thieren’s remarks coincide with other reports of UN officials showing favouritism to Israel amid its military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the enclave. Data from an Israeli military database that surfaced in August 2025 indicates that fewer than one in five of those killed in Israel’s campaign are alleged militants.
In October, The New Humanitarian reported allegations by nearly a dozen aid workers that the UN’s top two officials in Gaza have blamed Palestinians for aid shortages and allowed Israel to manipulate the response.
In August, The New Humanitarian revealed a meeting between several senior UN officials and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a group backed by the US and Israel that has been widely condemned for running militarised food distribution sites where Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinians. The GHF has since ended its operations in Gaza. Also in August, World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain drew criticism for releasing a joint statement and posing for a photo with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Thieren similarly posed for a photo last year with Israel’s then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. A few weeks later, the ICC issued a warrant for Gallant’s arrest.
“He’s gone rogue,” a WHO staff member, alarmed by Thieren’s recent conduct, told The New Humanitarian. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid any professional reprisals.
“WHO has lost countless staff, as many UN agencies have, but all throughout, [Michel] has been… delivering lines in praise of Israel,” the staff member said.
The New Humanitarian asked Thieren via email and LinkedIn to elaborate on his criticisms of the international humanitarian response to the Gaza crisis. He did not reply.
While his Tribune Juive article acknowledged the “ordeal in which two million Palestinian civilians are plunged”, his June speech cautioned that “any comparison through numbers or stories is inappropriate. It leads to enormous misrepresentation of realities on either side.”
Thieren promotes Israeli messaging
Like other UN officials accused of showing pro-Israel bias, Thieren’s role includes providing lifesaving services to Palestinians.
“WHO’s Special Representative to Israel has played an important role in the medical evacuation of Palestinian patients from Gaza, via Israel, to third countries,” the WHO said in its statement. “He has maintained close working relations with numerous Israeli stakeholders including civil society, to help alleviate the suffering in both Israel and Gaza.”
Meanwhile, he has promoted Israeli government messaging that obscures Israel’s role in causing that suffering.
In a social media post in November 2024, on the day the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, Thieren described a conversation with Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar. “When Gaza was raised, Minister Sa’ar indicated that Israel is not in any agenda to weaponise humanitarian aid,” Thieren wrote.
Examples of Israel’s alleged weaponisation of aid include arbitrary and prolonged restrictions on supplies entering Gaza, its backing of the GHF, deadly attacks on aid seekers and displaced people in a supposed safe zone, restrictive NGO registration rules, the banning of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Recent reporting has revealed that around the same time Thieren repeated Sa’ar’s statement, Israeli military lawyers were concerned that Israel’s conduct in Gaza could lead to war crimes charges.
This year, Thieren has repeatedly criticised his employer’s response to the crisis in Gaza.
During his June speech, Thieren accused the UN, the WHO, and the European Union of failing in their “universal humanitarian commitment” to assist hundreds of Israeli hostages who were held by Hamas in Gaza at the time.
“None of them has seen any humanitarian organisation, including WHO, bringing even one paracetamol pill to alleviate their pain,” he said, according to a written version of the speech seen by The New Humanitarian.
In his interview with the Mosaïque podcast, Thieren made a more serious allegation. He claimed that international experts in Geneva decided in December 2023 to find evidence of famine in Gaza to exert political pressure on Israel.
“We stated the crimes, and then we tried to prove them, and for me, that’s completely unacceptable,” he said, without specifying which organisations were involved in the alleged plot.
The Israeli government boosted Thieren’s allegation on social media, saying in a Halloween-themed post that he had “exposed” the UN’s “costume of concern”.
The WHO said in its statement that while Israeli hostages were detained in Gaza, it repeatedly called for their release. The organisation added that it has never tried to “frame a narrative” about famine.
“Early warning about possible famine conditions is a humanitarian obligation, not a political act,” the statement said. “We welcome scrutiny of our data and methods – but reject the suggestion that our health reporting serves any agenda other than saving lives.”
Elsewhere in the Mosaïque interview, Thieren used a medical analogy to raise suspicion about a UN Commission of Inquiry that concluded in September that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
“When you’re studying medicine, when you learn the treatment for a disease, if the treatment is described in 10 pages, it means there isn’t one,” he said. “The bigger the reports, the more suspicious they are.”
The WHO said in its statement that neither its regional office in Europe, which oversees the Israel office, nor its headquarters in Geneva, were aware of Thieren’s Mosaïque interview or June speech.
Two days after the speech, Thieren’s superior, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge, praised the event and shared quotes from Thieren’s speech on social media.
“Necessarily somewhat biased”
Thieren has described his engagement with Israeli leaders as “humanitarian diplomacy” – a necessity for saving lives.
According to the WHO staff member who spoke to The New Humanitarian, Thieren’s record of humanitarian diplomacy places insufficient emphasis on advocating against Israel’s attacks on healthcare in Palestine.
“There is barely a hospital standing in Gaza. There would be an expectation that Michel was vocal – if not externally, then at least internally,” the staff member said. “If you know anything about WHO’s work, then you know that we speak out in terms of attacks on health.”
The WHO has documented 735 attacks on healthcare in Gaza between October 2023 and June 2025. These attacks killed 917 people, wounded 1,411, affected 125 health facilities, and damaged 34 hospitals. The humanitarian data analysis group Insecurity Insight has documented 2,152 attacks on healthcare or obstructions of access in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025, as well as 418 instances of health facilities being damaged, 739 health workers killed, and 362 arrested.
When WHO colleagues have shared information internally about Israel’s atrocities, Thieren has chastised them, according to internal communications seen by The New Humanitarian.
When a colleague shared an article in a work-related channel about the UN Commission of Inquiry’s genocide announcement, Thieren replied that the sharing of the article was “politically motivated and inappropriate” and delegitimised his role.
“I have seen so many times my own organisation jumping into conclusions while omitting realities from here – realities that I observe every day,” he told another colleague who shared an article about Israel’s aid restrictions. “I am trapped within the most polarising event in modern history.”
The WHO staff member posited that Thieren’s rhetoric is aimed at preventing Israel from withdrawing as a WHO member state. Israeli lawmakers proposed exiting WHO’s governing body in March in response to criticism from the organisation.
“Israel remains a valued Member State of the World Health Organization,” the WHO said in its statement, without commenting on whether Thieren’s role involves maintaining Israel’s membership.
By his own account, Thieren is motivated by a belief in the “geocultural, linguistic centrality of Israel, of Israelis, of Jews, and of Hebrew”.
“One cannot grow up in the world without worrying about or being interested in Israel,” he told Mosaïque. “I can very well do without... Luxembourg… or Latvia.”
He clarified that he did not intend to express prejudice against these countries. Before his current role, Thieren was WHO’s Special Representative to Latvia.
Elsewhere in the interview, Thieren credited the WHO with allowing him to “test the limits of the organisation” with testimony that is “necessarily somewhat biased”.
“If they’re deploying me there, it’s because they also know me. They’re taking the risk of having a nuanced contribution,” he told the interviewer. “In any case, it will probably be my last post.”
Edited by Andrew Gully.
