Israel Ministry of Health Finds Pfizer Agreement After Claiming It Couldn’t Be Located

A medic prepares a dose of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Netanya, Israel, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

The Israel Ministry of Health (MoH) declared to an Israeli court that it couldn’t find the COVID-19 vaccine agreement it signed with Pfizer, but it was found one day after a national broadcaster asked for comment.

The declaration was made during a Jerusalem District Court hearing regarding a request seeking the original, signed agreement between the State of Israel and Pfizer—the agreement that regulates the transfer of epidemiological information regarding Pfizer’s vaccine from Israel to the company.

Israeli authorities published a redacted copy (pdf) of the agreement called “The Real World Epidemiological Evidence Collaboration Agreement” in January 2021.

The preamble stated that Pfizer and Israel “agree that it would be highly beneficial from a public health perspective to track pandemic data in accordance with vaccination compliance in a Real-World context,” adding “to evaluate whether herd immunity protection is observed during the Product vaccination program rollout.”

The copy was published after a nonprofit expressed concerns to Israeli officials over privacy protection, since the agreement gave Pfizer the ability to access information on Israeli citizens.

Significant parts of the copy made public were redacted, including dates and page numbers, and it was not signed by either the MoH or Pfizer.

Freedom of Information Request

A Freedom of Information application (FOI) was filed in April 2022 seeking to clarify the degree of authenticity and validity of the Pfizer–MoH agreement.

The request was filed by Joseph Zernik, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Connecticut and who in recent years has been involved in matters related to human rights.

Zernik is the CEO of Human Rights Alert, a nongovernment organization that works to increase transparency in government authorities. It deals with the integrity and authenticity of legal and judicial government documents.

The agreement with Pfizer was of particular importance since ”it was published in response to public pressure on the highest level of government,” Zernik told The Epoch Times.

“They published an unsigned document, undated document, and major parts of it were redacted,” he said, questioning the legal justification for the redactions and the document’s authenticity.

Among the redacted portions: sections titled “INDEMNIFICATION; [sic] LIMITATIONS OF DAMAGES AND LIABILITY and “Dispute Resolution.“ Additionally, a date in the preamble referring to another document, a “confidential Manufacturing and Supply Agreement,” was blacked out.

Zernik also asked in the FOI request for the number of agreements Pfizer and MoH signed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the names of the agreements and the dates each was signed, according to the FOI letter reviewed by The Epoch Times.

Zernik took MoH to court in September 2022 after it didn’t provide any of the requested information and did not respond to two letters warning of legal action.

The Jerusalem District Court in Jerusalem, Israel. (Google Maps)

Administrative Appeal

The court action, or administrative appeal (pdf), was directed to three officials, including Nitzan Horowitz, the minister of health at the time.

Zernik said in his appeal letter that the information he was seeking “holds the highest public policy significance in Israel, given growing concerns regarding side effects of the Pfizer vaccines, hiding the true data regarding side effects, and/or publishing perverted side effects data by the Respondents.”

The appeal noted that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had called Israel the “world’s lab.” In an NBC interview in 2021, he said that “Israel has become the world’s lab right now because they are using only our vaccine at this stage and they have vaccinated [a] very big part of their population.”

The court was asked to force the government to file a signed copy of the contract and, once it received the copy, to review each of the redactions and the provided justifications for each to decide whether each redaction should be kept in place, or removed.

“Providing [the] court with an authentic signed document was a prerequisite for moving on with the rest,” Zernik said.

MoH’s Response

MoH finally responded on Oct. 26, 2022—seven weeks after the submission of the appeal and six months after the FOI was filed. The delay meant the MoH significantly exceeded the time legally allowed for a reply.

The letter of response (pdf) included a copy of the Pfizer agreement and the names of additional contracts that were signed with Pfizer and the dates they were signed.

But the vaccine agreement was unsigned and contained redactions.

The MoH said that the copy of the agreement it presented in court was the copy “found at the office.”

The ministry claimed that the disclosure of the redacted information could “damage the State of Israel’s bargaining capabilities in future negotiations, including with other companies” and “discourage companies from engaging in dialogue with the State of Israel for fear that information will be revealed from the negotiations or from the agreements themselves upon their signing.”

It also said that under the agreement, the parties agreed not to disclose some of the information.

New Information

The letter and the new copy of the agreement did provide new information.

For one, the ministry said it signed at least two additional agreements with Pfizer: a confidential disclosure agreement signed on July 12, 2020, and a statement of principles signed on Nov. 13, 2020.

Further, some of the redactions were different in the new copy. The differences showed that one of the other agreements, for manufacturing and supply, was signed on Dec. 1, 2020.

That agreement has still not been made public.

(R) First page of the signed Pfizer–Israel epidemiology information sharing agreement released Dec. 13, 2022, and (L) first page of the Pfizer–Israel contract released January 2021. (Screenshot by The Epoch Times)

Court Hearing

In a letter to the court, State Attorney Achva Berman, representing the MoH, said that authorities could not locate a signed copy of the vaccine contract.

The version provided “is the copy of the agreement that is found at the office,” Berman said. After Zernik lodged his request, “another inspection was conducted, and no signed copy of the agreement was found,” she added.

Berman said authorities, therefore, had to “reject the petitioner’s request to receive the signed agreement.”

On Dec. 1, 2022, a hearing was held in the Jerusalem District Court that focused on “whether there was an agreement that was signed but the agreement was not located, or whether the agreement was not signed,” said Judge Yoram Noam, according to the hearing transcript.

“Is it possible to get a clear answer about this matter?” asked the judge.

“We searched and could not find a signed agreement,” replied Berman.

Zernik argued that for such a complex contract, each party has a battery of experts who review it. That means the legal department should have records, including when the agreement was signed, and that the director-general’s calendar should also reflect when it was signed.

“We tried to locate the signed agreement. It was not located,” said Berman. “We searched in all the relevant places, including the director general’s office and the legal office. We searched in the place where agreements should be.”

“So it is not only that they lost the signed contract, but they lost all records outside of the contract that the contract was ever signed,” Zernik said.

Eventually, the judge ruled that the MoH needed to provide Zernik with additional clarification regarding the existence of a signed copy.

A week later, the state attorney said in a missive to Zernik that “a comprehensive inquiry was conducted with many officials with the Ministry of Health to clarify the question of whether the agreement was signed or not,” but, citing the change of the government and the relevant parties in the MoH, the agency “was unable to find whether the agreement was signed or not.”

The letter also noted that the agency contacted Pfizer to find out if the company had a signed copy of the agreement, but Pfizer did not respond by the time the letter was submitted to the court and Zernik.

The petition was going to be dismissed by consent, said Zernik. “I was going to agree to a dismissal.”

Since the MoH insisted that it couldn’t find the signed authentic contract, there was nowhere to go with this petition concerning the redactions, according to Zernik. “There was no way to establish what was written under the redactions if they can’t find an authentic signed document.”

Signed Copy of the Agreement Found

Several days later, on Dec. 13, 2022, the MoH reversed its position. The agency told the court officials it had located a signed copy of the agreement (pdf).

“The Ministry of Health has located a collaboration agreement in epidemiological evidence with Pfizer, signed by the parties to the agreement,” the letter signed by Berman declared.

The finding came after Kan 11, an Israeli broadcaster, contacted MoH about the matter.

“We reached out to the Ministry of Health to get a comment and then in less than a day, lo and behold, the signed agreement was found,” Nov Reuveny, a journalist with Kan 11, said on air.

“The Ministry would like to emphasize that an epidemiological evidence cooperation agreement was originally signed with the Pfizer company,” the agency told Kan 11. “It exists in the Ministry and the signed copy was delivered to the court.”

“The initial answer, given to the court, should not have been given as it is, and for that we are sorry,” the MoH said.

Zernik had contacted Kan 11 because he thought the inability to find the signed agreement was significant.

“It was so bizarre,” Zernik said. “That’s why I approached Kan 11, because anybody who has any understanding of how government works couldn’t believe this story.”

In the end, the narrative MoH presented in court collapsed, he said. “It was so ludicrous, so outrageous, that it eventually collapsed” and the petition is going to move forward.

The MoH did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

The new copy provided by the MoH was signed by Chezy Levy, the director-general of the MoH when the agreement was signed. The name and position of the Pfizer representative were redacted. Most of the previously redacted parts remain blacked out.

On Feb. 16, 2023, there will be another hearing when the MoH is supposed to present to the court the authentic document without redactions and to provide justification for each and every redaction in the document.

Zernik said he hopes the judge will rule that at least some of the redactions have no legal justification and will be removed so “we'll learn a lot more about what’s going on in the relationship between the State of Israel and Pfizer.”

“So we’re not at the end of it yet,” he said.