In order to fight the coronavirus, everyone has to work together. But working together with Israel violates one of the core BDS principles, of being against "normalization" with Israel.
By BDS' definition, normalization is "the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.”
Therefore, a meeting last week between Palestinian doctors from Jericho and Israeli experts on how to fight the coronavirus would be a violation of the BDS demands. And so is all the other cooperation between Israelis and Arabs on fighting the pandemic.
In ongoing joint efforts to slow the spread of #COVIDー19, Palestinian medical teams in the Jericho region attended a professional training session today to learn methods for examining patients, managing isolation facilities in hospitals & preventing infection of medical staff. pic.twitter.com/eCOqipUaNh— COGAT (@cogatonline) March 22, 2020
How absurd that a movement supposedly meant to help Palestinians would prefer that they not cooperate against a worldwide threat! But there you have it - BDS doesn't care about Palestinians.
And Israel does.
