The head of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), Etty Feller, suddenly found out that getting your house bombed is not something you should ignore, after having spent literally years ignoring the Russian bombing of Ukraine.
Feller consistently refused to oust Russia from ILAC, continuing to allow the organization to accredit laboratories under the ILAC banner, all while collecting rubles for doing so. I suspect some of that money went into Feller’s pocket, assuming her role as ILAC CEO isn’t a voluntary one. This was in violation of international sanctions, including those of ILAC’s twin home countries of Australia and Belgium. But Feller lives in Israel, and that country took a hands-off position on Russia’s invasion. So Feller — who is also the head of Israel’s national standards body, and thus a government employee — followed suit.
But let’s be realistic: Feller was not prevented at all from ensuring that ILAC, which is decidedly not an Israeli government agency, followed international law and banned Russia. Instead, she allowed ILAC’s entire operations to be crippled not only by the specifics of her home country’s political posture, but her personal need to make sure her other job wasn’t affected. That’s a troubling conflict of interest that should have forced her to resign, but ILAC doesn’t care much about conflicts of interest. Even though doing so is, like, their actual job.
But since the Hamas attacks in Israel, Feller has been posting on LinkedIn about the carnage in that country nearly 10 to 20 times per hour. I am not kidding. See the graphic below for just a few hours of such posts (click to enlarge.) Suddenly, Feller found her outrage when the bombs were falling on her house and those of the Jews of Israel, after having spent at least two years ignoring the bombs falling on Jewish homes in Ukraine. Worse, Feller hasn’t said anything now that Israeli Jews were met with violent protests after a flight to Russia, with the Putin government fanning the flames of antisemitism so that people might forget he is losing the war in Ukraine.
Apparently, Feller only thinks antisemitism is bad if it’s in her neighborhood? I don’t think that’s how it works.
Call me crazy, but I think she can do two things at once, and not be a toxic hypocrite. Russia can — and should — be thrown out of ILAC, and Feller can step aside to let a non-Israeli ILAC official issue that proclamation. She can recuse herself on the matter, if she’s that conflicted. She can even do so in private, so no one knows. She’d keep her day job in the process.
Will she?
History suggests that she likely will not. ISO, ILAC, IAF, and other organizations in the ISO-sphere are all complicit in many of the atrocities plaguing the world right now. They rake in millions of dollars under the protection of phony “neutrality” policies, pretending they are the United Nations or the Red Cross. They are not. These are private non-profit organizations run by executives who collect salaries; their organizations may not “make a profit,” but their execs most certainly do.
For now, here’s an entire wall of blank space that invites you to, again, click the image below, to show Etty Feller’s newfound outrage. 
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 30 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
