Yousef H. Abu Alreesh, a Hamas official wanted by the IDF, co-authored an article in the respected journal PLOS ONE, highly regarded for its rigorous research and peer review process, entitled “Rebuilding Gaza’s health system: A qualitative study of healthcare workers’ experiences and lessons learned from responding to mass casualty incidents (2018–2021).”

Alreesh, Gaza’s deputy health minister, is the 10 of spades in the IDF’s unofficial deck of playing cards. At the beginning of the war with Hamas, the IDF distributed playing cards to its soldiers comprising 54 cards with wanted Hamas officials for purposes of identification on the battlefield, 37 of whom had been killed as of December. The deck was inspired by a similar one used by the U.S. military in its war with Iraq to help American soldiers identify the most wanted Iraqi officials from Saddam Hussein’s government, a practice that dates back to the American Civil War.

The authors, who refer to the “ongoing genocide” in Gaza, claim to hold “no competing interests.” In addition, the PLOS ONE website proclaims its commitment to fairness and rigor in its guidelines for publishing peer-reviewed articles.

Under a section titled “Fair and Robust Review,” the website says, “PLOS ONE staff and our expert board of Academic Editors work together to ensure that the peer review process is fair, fast and thorough and that the work we publish meets high ethical and methodological standards in line with our editorial policies.”

It remains to be seen how the journal managed to let a Hamas official slip past its “fair and robust review.”

In an interview with JNS, Dr. Yael Halaas, president and founder of the American Jewish Medical Association, said that “this is yet another example of biased articles weaving in slanted political propaganda that have been published in ‘scholarly’ scientific journals.”

“We have seen a disturbing pattern in peer-reviewed academic journals: material that is not grounded in rigorous science, that lacks any balanced or critical perspective and that undermines the integrity of the scholarly process,” she said. “What is presented as ‘peer reviewed’ too often reflects ideological bias rather than credible scientific inquiry.”

“The militarization of hospitals and ambulances destroys the sanctity of these spaces,” she added. “The hoarding of critical civilian aid and supplies by Hamas should be mentioned in this article. Both are major determinants in the health of the Palestinian people. These biased articles never address this sad reality.”

“Academic publishing has been hijacked, and it’s frightening to witness this occur in science and medicine, where objectivity and integrity should be paramount,” she concluded.