State governments and major hospitals are deeply are embedded in Israel’s health ‘ecosystem’, while Israel refuses to help 20,000 injured in Gaza. Wendy Bacon and Cathy Peters report.
NSW and Victorian governments’ support for Israel was on display during Israeli President Herzog’s visit. What has not been so public is how ties with Israel are already embedded in state health systems, while Israel continues to strike medical workers and centres as it bombs Iran and Lebanon, continues to block urgent medical assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, and attempts to ban some 37 medical aid NGOs.
For years, Israeli organisations have worked to incorporate Australian health systems and hospitals into their ‘health ecosystems’ by exploiting Israel’s preferred image as a hi-tech leader, a ‘start-up nation’.
However, in light of Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian health system, efforts to strengthen links between the Australian and Israeli health systems raise ethical questions about complicity with genocide.
Concerned Australian healthcare workers from Nurses and Midwives for Palestine, Health Workers for Palestine NSW and Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Doctors for Palestine told MWM,
“As healthcare professionals, we find it absolutely reprehensible that Australian health institutions would even consider partnering with Israeli counterparts who have either actively supported, or failed to condemn, Israel’s medicide of Palestinian healthcare workers – with over 1700 murdered – and annihilation of Gaza’s healthcare system.”
Their opposition to Israeli partnerships reflects similar concerns in Canada and the US.
Sheba connections
Despite international legal findings of Israel’s genocide and ongoing war crimes, the Victorian State Government, NSW Health, Monash Health, Monash University, the Peter MacCallum Centre, Silvershain, St Vincents Health and Invest Victoria are strategic partners with Israel’s largest government-run health facility, Sheba Medical Centre.
Two Australian-based charities. Australian Friends of Sheba Medical Centre and Hadassah Australia have tax-deductible status and fundraise for two of Israel’s leading hospitals, Sheba Medical Centre and Hadassah. The Melbourne-based Gandel Foundation made a significant tax-deductible donation to the $132US million Gandel Rehabilitation Centre for Israeli soldiers at Hadassah Mount Scopus. Melbourne rich listers John and Pauline Gandel are its principal donors.
Sheba Medical Centre is a major supporter and trainer of medical teams for the IDF, particularly during the Gaza genocide. It joined with Elbit Systems to use its military thermal imaging technology against Palestinians in Gaza.
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Sheba established, with Friends of the IDF, the “Returning to Life” National Centre for Victims of Mental Trauma, delivering innovative mental care that helps veterans and their families return to life.’ Director General of Sheba Medical Centre Yitshak Kreiss, an Israeli physician who served in the IDF for 25 years, has pursued links with Australia on several recent visits.
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St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, is an international partner of the Sheba Medical Centre, with the Victorian State Government, Invest Victoria, NSW Health, Monash Health, Monash University, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Silverchain listed as Australian partners. Australian Israeli businessman Frank Lowy is a major donor to Sheba, funding a new ICU unit in 2023.
Australian Friends of Sheba (AFS) fundraises for Sheba. AFS CEO is IDF veteran, Idan Goldberger, who previously headed the United Israel Appeal in Australia. University of Melbourne Professor Michael Hofman is a Director of AFS and also a clinician with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
He has worked with AFS on initiatives, including a 2022 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to foster scientific exchange and clinical trials between Peter MacCallum and Sheba. Dr Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Senior Neurosurgeon, Alfred Hospital and Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Monash University is a an AFS Patron.
Gaza health system destruction
In August 2025, a UN Commission of Inquiry found that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) had carried out “targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system” and that this amounted to “medicide”.
The Commissioners, who included Australian international lawyer Chris Sidoti, found that Israel deliberately attacked and starved healthcare workers and hospitals to wipe out medical care in Gaza. UN bodies issued directives to Third States not to support or aid Israel’s conduct of genocide, including institutions directly contributing to Israel’s war effort.
The medicide is ongoing.
Israel has damaged and destroyed 94% of Gaza”s hospitals. At least 1,722 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza, and Israel has detained hundreds of Palestinian health workers, including senior doctors, without charge. There is extensive evidence that they have been tortured, beaten and starved.
The Israeli government refuses to allow an estimated 20,000 severely injured Gazans access to treatment in Israel or in Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This means Palestinians must seek treatment elsewhere. Only a handful exited Gaza before Israel again closed the Rafah crossing and other exits when the current war began.
Human Rights organisations and some Israeli doctors warn that “every day of delay in evacuating patients directly endangers their lives”. They have petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to allow Gazan patients treatment in Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but the case won’t be heard until July, and even if successful, it will not apply to Israeli hospitals.
Healthcare workers united
Two years ago, an Australian healthcare workers’ petition was launched calling on the Government to support actions that addressed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It’s been signed by over 43,000 health professionals and was mentioned in the NSW parliament by Greens MLC Dr Amanda Cohn.
Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Doctors for Palestine have lobbied consistently and criticised Australian and New Zealand medical colleges for their lack of leadership in relation to Israel’s human rights breaches. This open letter, signed by over 700 paediatric fellows and trainees, was sent to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ (RACP) Paediatrics & Child Health Division (PCHD) in July 2025.
Meanwhile, as the Knesset debates draconian laws regarding death sentences for Palestinian ‘prisoners’,
One hundred Israeli doctors have pledged to carry out executions.
Government partnerships
Then Acting Secretary of NSW Health, Susan Pearce and Mark Sofer, former Israeli Ambassador to Australia, signed a Declaration of Intent in 2019 between NSW Health and Israel’s Ministry of Health to promote bilateral cooperation between the two parties in health and medicine.
Shortly afterwards, the Australian-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC) sent a trade mission to Israel, which Sofer declared as “a milestone in the burgeoning relations between Israel and New South Wales, which provides the perfect foundation for the upcoming visit of Premier Berejiklian to Israel next year.”
Before the Liberal government lost office in 2023, the Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard, signed a 5-year MOU with Sheba Centre and NSW Health, claiming its relationship with Sheba would bolster the strategic relationship with Israel. In 2024, NSW Health Minister Ryan Park met with Sheba representatives to discuss the MOU.
In response to questions from MWM, a spokesperson for NSW Health said that NSW Health collaborates with health systems and organisations around the world, and the Israel MOU is in line with advice received by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. MWM could not identify any similar partnerships, so we asked NSW Health to identify them. We received no reply.
Last year, Greens MP Jenny Leong asked Park what steps NSW Health had undertaken to ensure that Sheba had no ties to the Israel Defence Forces or to any enterprises identified by the UN as being participants in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories, which include Gaza.
In September 2025, Dr Amanda Cohn Greens MLC wrote to NSW Health Minister Park calling for the termination of the MOU. She told MWM, “NSW Health has told me that there have been no tangible undertakings through its agreement with the Sheba Medical Centre.
This purely symbolic partnership is only serving Israel’s image, not patients here or overseas.
Meanwhile, the AICC has continued to stage its annual Health Innovation Program to which PM Anthony Albanese sent a message of support in 2022. In 2024, Pearce, along with the CEO of St. Vincent’s Health, hosted the Health Innovation Program with Israel-based health experts, including those from Sheba and Hadassah hospitals and digital health start-up, Datos, which partners with the Victorian government’s Northern Health.
Monash University, which has had strong research links with Israel since 2018, is investing $1.5 million in the first three years of its 2023 MOU with Sheba Medical Centre. The partnership focuses on ‘new medical technology, digital health innovations and models of care and facilitates their commercialisation, manufacture and adoption in health service environments’.
The Victorian state government, Monash University, Monash Health, Silverchain and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre have partnered with Sheba to launch an Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate (ARC) Innovation Centre, which will be one of the global networks that the Sheba ARC Innovation Centre in Israel promotes. Melbourne hosted the inaugural ARC Asia Summit in March 2025. Sheba ARC has some 140 private start-up companies in its fold, which it claims will benefit from its global outreach.
The ARC aims are to create a hub for digital health innovation to ‘grow Victoria’s capabilities in healthcare outcomes, commercialisation, and entrepreneurship’. But as Greens MP Dr Tim Read stated when raising concerns about the ARC/ APAC Summit held in Melbourne in March 2025, the push to promote Israel as a key hi-tech medical innovator rings hollow in light of Israel’s criminal actions against Gaza’s health system.
The 2023 collaboration between Sheba’s ARC Centre, Sheba Medical Centre and Silverchain, a leading Australian provider of complex home care, aims to ‘use Israeli technology to transform digital and remote home care services in Australia’.
Charity support
Australia/Israel Medical Research (AUSiMED), a non-profit organisation committed to collaborations between Australia and Israel, currently supports a partnership to train more critical care doctors for Israel. Its Seconds Save Lives appeal is supporting (Israeli) civilians and military personnel injured since 2023. Last year,
Hadassah Australia raised $6.6m to support the Hadassah Medical Organisation in Israel.
Israel’s 2025 Gandel Rehabilitation Centre at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem is jointly funded by the Israeli government, Hadassah Australia and the Gandel Foundation. It primarily treats wounded Israeli soldiers. Professor Yoram Weiss, Director General, Hadassah Medical Organization commented:
“The first patients – including heroes and heroines to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude – can now begin their journey back to full health with the help of a specially designed department with advanced rehabilitation equipment and systems built and installed especially for them.”
Hadassah boasts an underground medical complex, as does Sheba, and while both champion their special contributions to Operation Roaring Lion, Palestinians are left to die in Gaza, while Israel has killed more than thirty Lebanese medical workers in recent weeks.
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Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.