Professor Juan Cole, who manages one of my favorite news blogs, Informed Comment, has written an article exposing apartheid Israel’s refusal to
distribute the covid vaccines to Palestinians in Israel or the Occupied Territories.
Yes, as I demonstrate in my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism, Israel is an ethnocratic state that prioritizes Jewish lives above all others.
Several of my friends in the West Bank have already contracted covid. Thankfully, none of
them have died, and all seem to have recovered fully.
Due to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and its perennial lack of funds (largely due to American and Israeli economic restrictions), the rate of infection is much higher than officially reported.
People are afraid to tell their bosses and supervisors when they do become sick, because they fear losing their jobs and being ostracized.
Cole’s article can be found at Robert Scheer’s new journalism site, Scheerpost.
The piece is entitled, “Israel’s Latest War Crime: Medical Apartheid.”
I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire piece here:
Some ten percent of Israelis have already been given the coronavirus shot, showing what an efficient government can do for its citizens with the right medical and administrative infrastructure. The Trump administration has not been able to ramp up the actual shots in arms, despite shipping millions of doses of vaccine to states and localities.
There’s just one problem with Israel’s success. It is only within Israel proper.
Israel militarily occupies the Palestinian West Bank and keeps the little Palestinian Gaza Strip under blockade. In international law, Israel is responsible for the health and well-being of the people it militarily occupies. Not vaccinating them against a pandemic is a war crime.
You know how many shots Israeli physicians have given the Palestinians under their rule? None.
This, even though Israeli squatters who have stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank are being given the shot.
There has been a dangerous spike in cases and deaths during the past two months in the Palestinian Territories.
The ministry of health of Occupied Palestine announced on Friday that 18 people died of COVID-19 that day, and 1,450 new cases were recorded, this for a population of 5 million.
These statistics are almost certainly missing many cases and deaths, since Palestinians living under the Israeli boot have lost tens of billions of dollars in potential income and their medical infrastructure is ramshackle. There is a severe shortage, for instance, of intensive care units. On top of all that, the Trump administration has cruelly and ruthlessly slashed aid to the Palestinians and has knee-capped the UN Relief and Works Agency that used to help out Palestinian refugees. These are families ethnically cleansed by the Israelis in 1948 and 1967.
As far as the health ministry can tell, 13% of the Palestinian population tests positive for the virus and about 1% of those stricken end up dying. That would be 650,000 people stricken, of whom 6,500 will die. They wouldn’t die at that rate if they were getting the vaccine.
