Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: COVID-19

Showing posts with label COVID-19. Show all posts

Monday, January 04, 2021

EoZTV: The vaccine libel

Mrs. Elder and I discuss the absurd reporting from various news organizations that libelously claim or imply that Israel is withholding vaccines from Palestinians.

We talk about why they are wrong from the perspective of international law, existing agreements, and even how some of the demands are infantilizing Palestinians.

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Israel isn't only leading the world in per-capita COVID vaccinations, but it is accelerating its lead

By now, you have probably seen a chart like this showing how far ahead Israel is in vaccinating its citizens for COVID-19 per capita compared to the rest of the world:

This is due to a strong infrastructure where the security apparatus of the state has pivoted to provide virus protection. But part of it is also by having a centralized decision making process where, for example, leftover vaccines at the end of the day that would have been otherwise discarded (because of Pfizer's requirements that the vaccine is kept in ultra-cold temperatures and they cannot be re-frozen) are being used for people who would otherwise not qualify for the first round that is meant for front line workers and the elderly.

It is also due to Israel's willingness to reportedly pay a huge premium per vaccine in order to ensure that it would have an adequate supply, as well as a huge publicity campaign to ensure that people who might otherwise be skeptical - such as the Arab and haredi communities - get vaccinated.

Yet as well as Israel is doing, there is an even more remarkable chart from the same source that shows that Israel's efforts are getting even better every day in the percentage of the population being inoculated:

These charts are not going to remain looking like this, because some countries will hold off on giving first vaccinations and prioritize giving second vaccinations to the people who already had it. However, Israel seems to have realized that it can reach herd immunity in relatively little time compared to other countries and reaching that goal - which will allow things to return to near-normal - is worth investing huge amounts of time and money in, and ultimately will be a bargain where the economy can rebound.

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"Normalization deadlier than COVID"

Here are excerpts of a ridiculous article in the Hamas-oriented Middle East Monitor by Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh:

This year has seen the world hit with the Covid-19 pandemic but some Arab leaders have afflicted us with the normalisation plague as they race to be best friends with the Zionist state. This plague is deadlier in many ways than the pandemic; the coronavirus affects individuals, while normalisation affects whole nations and threatens the present and future of the Arab people.

The Arab rulers have persisted in their hatred of their own people, and have joined hands with their enemies to conspire against Palestine, the cause that is central to the Muslim Ummah, not just the Arabs.

These normalisers have forgotten Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third Holy Mosque and the fulcrum of the Prophet's miraculous night journey, peace be upon him. In doing so they have made it the sole responsibility of the Palestinians oppressed in their own country, that was usurped by the Zionists, where they face all types of torture, humiliation and deprivation. They stand alone in defence of the Muslim sanctities.

The Palestinians didn't ask anyone to join the ranks of the resistance; they simply wanted moral support. Nevertheless, the Almighty will ask us all what we did to help them in the struggle to defend Al-Aqsa. Those who have made Israel their Qiblah and joined with the usurpers of the Noble Sanctuary have some serious questions to answer. They have given a veneer of legitimacy to the Israeli occupation and helped to strengthen Zionist control over Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. The least they can do is spare the Palestinians from the normalisation evil.

The claims that normalisation will not harm the Palestinian cause overlook the fact that Israel is nothing but a Western colonial project to divide and rule the region through client states. It is beyond comprehension to normalise relations with it, due to the nature of the Zionist project and its expansionist goals, which may include the normalising countries.

Let the normalised regimes rejoice in their relations with the Zionists, while preparing for the day when their people will rise up and depose them. The day will come when the Arab people will be liberated from the tyrannical regimes occupying their lands, and from the externally-imposed occupation state. Tomorrow is just a day away.

At least this article doesn't pretend to care about Palestinians. It shows that the entire supposed Arab support for Palestinians is really just to use them to help destroy Israel.

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Israel will vaccinate Arab terrorists in prison over the next few days (before millions of Israeli citizens)

The supposedly racist Israeli authorities will be giving Palestinian prisoners the coronavirus vaccine before most Israeli citizens get inoculated.

The head of the Palestinian Prisoners and Executives Affairs Authority, Major General Qadri Abu Bakr, announced Saturday that the Israel Prison Service has informed the prisoners that they will be vaccinated against COVID-19 during the next few days.

The vaccinations, which will use the Pfizer vaccine, will be voluntary.

This is of course not good enough for the Palestinians. The Palestinian prisoners Authority is demanding that the vaccinations be held under the supervision of international doctors.

This all of course doesn't jibe with the many news stories that came out last week that claimed that Israel was withholding vaccines from Palestinians. If Israel was racist, the prisoners would be the last ones to get the vaccine, if at all.

But when it comes to Israel, truth is apparently optional.

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Palestinian Arabs: forever jealous, bitter and clueless

Al Jazeera has an op-ed by Jalal Abukhater whining about normalization between Israel and the UAE.

Abukhater went to the University of Dundee, Scotland, and since then has used his English skills to write for Countercurrents, Electronic Intifada and most recently The Guardian. He lives in Jerusalem.

In his Al Jazeera piece, he complains that Emiratis visiting Israel are a "slap in the face" for Palestinians.

He writes:

In the second half of the year, a series of Arab states added to our collective misery by announcing their decision to normalise their relations with Israel. By effectively abandoning their supposed commitment to supporting Palestinian self-determination for money, weapons and a few short-term political gains, they sent us a clear message that our suffering and struggle for the most basic human rights no longer matter to them.

If there is one skill that is completely lacking in Palestinian DNA, it is the ability to view the world from any other perspective besides their own bitter viewpoint. They have been so blinded for so long that they simply cannot comprehend that there has been a huge change happening under their feet for two decades in how the Arab world views them.

Arab leaders would speak about their support for Palestinians out loud every day, drafting lots of anti-Israel resolutions in Arab and international forums, but beneath the surface everyone but the Palestinians themselves could see the fissures in the relationship. Arab nations would pledge hundreds of millions of dollars for "Palestine" or "Jerusalem" and pay only a tiny portion, if anything. They expressed deep frustration at how Palestinians couldn't unify under one leadership. They saw how the Fatah and Hamas would fight, bicker and arrest members of the other groups. They saw Palestinian leaders say "no" to repeated peace offers by Israel. And, of course, the Arab nations saw how Palestinians continued to cozy up to Iran as Iran threatened the Arabs of the Gulf.

Palestinians kept themselves blind to this. Their newspapers would rarely report on these stories. Their anger at the UAE "betrayal" is more because of their own choice to ignore 20 years of warning signs than anything the UAE is actually doing.

As far as the UAE not caring about Palestinians, this is clearly not true - they have sent COVID aid to the Palestinians, which was rejected by the PA even before the Abraham Accords but which Hamas has accepted. The UAE has been arranging to bring the Russian COVID vaccine into the PA territories.

More manifestations of Palestinian cluelessness manifest in Abukhater's op-ed:

The arrival of hundreds of Emiratis in Israel to enjoy the historic sites of Jerusalem and pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque was a slap in the face for us. After all, millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, just two dozen kilometres away from Al-Aqsa, can only dream about stepping foot in the mosque that is the third holiest site in Islam.

They can only dream about it? In recent years, Israel has issued hundreds of thousands of travel permits for Palestinians to visit Jerusalem - and even Tel Aviv! - during Ramadan, and Palestinians over 40 didn't even need a permit. In fact, some years the PA itself prohibited Palestinians from traveling!

There's another irony here. Abukhater lives in Jerusalem, meaning that he can visit Al Aqsa every day. He can also visit the rest of Israel every day. And he can also visit Ramallah every day. He, an Arab, has more freedom of movement than any Jew in Israel, including Jews who want to visit holy sites in Nablus or Jericho or elsewhere.

Of course, we Palestinian Jerusalemites were already used to seeing Muslim pilgrims from Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia or other non-Arab Muslim-majority countries at Al-Aqsa. Over the years, Palestinians rarely had any problem with these visitors, as they overwhelmingly believe this holiest of mosques should not be monopolised by any subset of Muslims, even under the devastating conditions of an occupation.

But the Palestinian Jerusalemites were not as accepting of Emirati tourists as others.

So who is intolerant?

Abukhater doesn't even realize what he is saying here. Citizens of countries that make peace with Israel are given the right to visit Israel proportionate to the closeness of relations. This should not be surprising - it is natural.

A Jewish woman was murdered, apparently by Palestinians, only two days ago. There was a Palestinian terror shooting also this week in Jerusalem. Is it really so strange that Israel limits Palestinian access to areas with Jews?

If Palestinians would act like Emiratis, they would have a state. If they accepted Jews as natives of the Middle East as Emiratis do, accept Israel as a Jewish state, and end their rhetorical and monetary support for terrorists, they would be able to visit Israel freely as well.

Israel's peace with the UAE and other Arab states proves this. Israel isn't anti-Arab or Islamophobic - it wants peace, security and acceptance, and is willing to bend over backwards to accommodate Arabs who provide that.

Palestinian hate and antisemitism and intransigence are the obstacles to peace. The UAE and Bahrain and Morocco prove it.

(h/t Josh Korn)

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Israeli NGO issues racist anti-Palestinian statement - and no one cares, because it is "liberal"

AP has a biased report essentially accusing Israel of anti-Palestinian racism because the Pfizer vaccine cannot be used in the territories, due to a shortage of super-cold refrigeration units that are needed for it to remain effective.

Left unsaid is that millions of Israelis will also have to wait months - there are not enough vaccines to go around now. AP is suggesting that Israel prioritize its own citizens behind Palestinians, which no nation on Earth would or should do.

While buried in the story it mentions that all rich nations are getting the vaccines before all poor nations, only Israel is blamed for this. No one is telling the US to wait to inoculate its citizens until Haitians are all vaccinated.

It isn't a question of discrimination. It is a question of logistics and limited resources. And even with that, PBS doesn't mention how Israel is working to provide vaccines for Palestinians by the millions.

But there is one part of the report where an Israeli Leftist NGO, Physicians for Human Rights, makes an incredibly condescending statement about Palestinians, and no one even bats an eye.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a group that advocates for more equitable health care, says Israel has a legal obligation as an occupying power to purchase and distribute vaccines to the Palestinians. It says Israel must also ensure that vaccines that don’t meet its own safety guidelines — like the Russian shot — are not distributed in areas under its control.

The Palestinian Authority has approved the Russian vaccine. Israel hasn't.

PHRI is saying that Palestinians cannot make their own decisions as to which vaccines are safe for them to use. Even worse, they are saying that the potential benefits of the Russian vaccine must not be made available to Palestinians but that they must adhere to Israeli medical standards, whether they want to or not - and at the risk of many more people becoming ill and dying.

The Russian Sputnik-V vaccine, although viewed with some skepticism by some, has been bought by countries like India, Brazil and Mexico. Russia claims a 92% effectiveness rate, on par with those of Pfizer and Moderna. Israel's Hadassah Hospital is helping the Palestinians import the vaccine, even though it will not be used by Israel at this time.

Yet Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is against this potentially life saving measure, because they condescendingly consider Palestinians too stupid to make life and death decisions for themselves.

That is Leftist racism.

And you can be sure that if Israel blocked the Russian vaccine from being sent to Palestinians, PHR-I would be the first to accuse Israel of human rights abuses.

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Palestinian prime minister compares COVID-19 with Israel - in his Christmas message

As usual, for Palestinians, everything must be politicized to be against Israel.

The latest example is Palestinian prime minister Mohame Shtayyeh's video speech at the lighting of the Bethlehem Christmas tree. During his address, he compared Israel to COVID-19 more than once, even referring to Israel as a "pandemic."

We will not surrender, neither to the virus nor to the occupation measures, and we will accomplish what we have started .
...
We presented a message in the political steadfastness in the face of the colonial occupation pandemic, and in the face of the seizure of our money, and we presented a message in the national steadfastness in the face of the disease pandemic.

This is the hate that Palestinians grow up with and receive every day of their lives.

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Blowing up the narrative: UAE negotiating with Israel to provide Palestinians with Russian vaccine for COVID-19

From the virulently anti-Israel Middle East Monitor:

Israel's Hadassah Medical Centre is currently in talks with the UAE over the sale of 1.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for Palestine, Quds Press reported yesterday.

According to the news site, the Israeli public radio Kan, reported that the negotiations between the two sides related to the Russian vaccine.

Kan noted that the Israeli Ministry of Health has not yet approved the Russian vaccine and it is not expected to approve it in the near future.

If I am reading this correctly, even though Israel does not trust the Russian vaccine for its own citizens, it allows Hadassah and the UAE to work to get the vaccine to Palestinians, which presumably do approve it.

This story blows up all the narratives: that Israel doesn't want to provide Palestinians with medicines, that the UAE hates Palestinians, that "normalization" is a catastrophe for Palestinians.

So far Russia has agreements to sell its vaccine to a number of countries including India, Venezuela, Mexico, China, Egypt and Brazil.

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Evil, genocidal Israelis to distribute millions of COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians

In another crushing blow to those who were hoping that Israel would use the coronavirus to finally perform the genocide of Palestinians that they have been predicting for 72 years, Israel is preparing to provide millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to those who want to see Israel disappear.

Israel Hayom (Hebrew) quotes a senior Palestinian Authority official saying that "between 3 and 4 million vaccines will be transferred from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and some of the vaccines will also go to Gaza. Israel is committed to helping us curb the virus."

Senior sources in the Palestinian Ministry of Health told Israel Today that the Palestinian Authority is included in any negotiations to purchase vaccines or order doses from Pfizer, Moderna or any other pharmaceutical company that Israel has or will have a supply agreement.

Unlike Israel, though, the Palestinians will also get millions of doses from the UN and other international organizations.

It is unclear whether Israel will be delaying vaccinating some of its own citizens to help the Palestinians.

Israel is filled with the world's worst genocidists, to be sure. But one can expect that Palestinians will start a rumor that the vaccines provided by Israel will be actually poison.

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Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians banned from going to Israeli hospitals - but Saeb Erakat is going to Israel to be treated for COVID-19

In 2010, 180,000 Palestinian patients were treated in Israeli hospitals.

But the Palestinian Authority has been reducing the number of permits of sick Palestinians to go to Israeli hospitals in recent years.

In 2017, it drastically reduced the number of Gazans given permission to travel to Israel for medical treatment.

Earlier this year, in order to fulfil a promise by Mahmoud Abbas to end all coordination with Israel, the Palestinian Authority stopped all transfers of patients to Israel - resulting in some deaths. Israeli NGOs scrambled to try to allow the most sick patients to come to Israel for treatment, while Palestinian NGOs angrily said that they would not try to help save Palestinian lives - the principle of non-cooperation was far more important than mere human life.

Well, that only applies to expendable Palestinians. But not the VIPs.

This morning, PLO Executive Committee secretary general Saeb Erakat was transferred to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem to treat his worsening COVID-19 symptoms. (UPDATE: Some say he is going to Tel Aviv.)

Apparently, the PLO rules of Palestinian honor only extend to allowing normal Palestinians to die for the cause, but not highly placed PLO officials.

A government that actively works against the interests of its own people does not deserve to exist to begin with. But when it distinguishes between the masses of its people it doesn't care about and its own top officials, it shows that it doesn't even adhere to its own stated principles to justify treating its citizens like dirt.

Palestinians deserve better leaders than this.

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Saeb Erakat lies again, falsely claims Abbas wished Trump a full recovery (UPDATE)

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency English website says:

Dr. Saeb Erekat, Secretary-General of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told CNN that President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas wishes US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania a speedy and full recovery.

However, if you look at the "Presidency" section on the Wafa Arabic website where all Abbas' official statements and communications are, there is not a word about wishing Trump a recovery on that page.

Abbas' Facebook page likewise does not say a word about this.

Understand that every public word by Abbas is listed on those pages, like "The President congratulates the King of Lesotho on their Independence Day."

It's almost like Saeb Erakat is making things up to stall the freefall of Abbas' reputation in the US.

UPDATE: Just as I was publishing this, I saw this amazingly hypocritical tweet from Erakat:

Met with China’s 🇨🇳 Ambassador to Palestine 🇵🇸 QWA WEI . Appreciated China’s firm stand with int. Law , end the Israeli occupation. No to annexation and settlements . Two States 1967 borders. Help Palestine to fight COVID 19. pic.twitter.com/pYBED4Wf6Z
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) October 5, 2020

Yes, the Palestinian leaders are praising the Chinese government - which, as one commenter noted, is "the only regime in the entire world that has a systematic and openly admitted occupation and detention programme targeted at Muslims, Tibetans and Mongolians" - as a paradigm for upholding international law!

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The Corona Disaster in Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

This morning (Wednesday) Israel’s Health Ministry announced that in the past 24 hours there were 6,861 new cases of Covid-19 detected in 59,169 tests, an 11.5% positive ratio. This ratio has been steadily increasing, which is an indication of the explosive spread of the disease.

This is the worst ever for Israel, which has had the greatest average number of new cases per day per million population in the world for several weeks now. The Health Ministry’s “point man” on Corona, Dr. Ronni Gamzu, predicted that within a week the number of serious cases that require hospitalization will exceed the capacity of the system. When that happens, the system will stretch a bit. One hospital converted a parking garage into a Corona facility in a remarkably short time; the IDF is setting up field hospitals. But if the numbers continue to increase, soon there will be no more flexibility. Doctors will have to decide whom to treat and whom not. People will die who could have been saved.

Last week Israel began a second partial lockdown. Its effect will not be felt for another week, but it’s doubtful – based on the various loopholes left in it for political reasons and a general lack of observance of the rules – that it will be enough to reduce the spread of the disease significantly.

There is a lack of good information available about how to reduce the number of infections, but it seems clear that crowds are bad, crowds indoors are worse, and masks – if properly worn – help, especially if both the infectious person and the one at risk wear them. It also seems that the amount of virus that a person picks up can affect whether they will be infected and how seriously; so the amount of time spent in a dangerous situation is important.

The strategy (as it appears today) of the Health Ministry is to apply restrictions to reduce the daily number of new cases to the point that it will be possible to track the contacts of each infected person, test them, and quarantine anyone who is positive or who has had direct contact with someone who tests positive. That is called “breaking the chain of infection.” But that can only happen if the number of new cases is manageable. Once that is achieved, it should be possible to gradually release the restrictions and return the society to normal without causing a new spike in infections. Estimates of how low it must go vary widely, between 100 and 1000 new cases per day.

The objective in applying restrictions is to restrict those behaviors that facilitate the spread of the virus as much as possible, while doing the smallest possible damage to the economy. And here we run into the problems of politics and attitudes.

Yesterday and today the “Corona Cabinet” – a committee of government ministers from relevant ministries – has been discussing the tightening of restrictions that will be needed. One of the biggest conflicts concerns two activities which involve large crowds, including numerous people without masks who do not observe “social distancing,” and which have zero impact on the economy. It would seem obvious that these would be the first to be restricted.

But the activities we are talking about are the weekly raucous, theatrical, and sometimes obscene demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, and his home in Caesarea; and the coming synagogue services on Yom Kippur.

The Left believes that there is nothing more sacred than the right to demonstrate. An attempt to shut down or even limit the numbers of demonstrators is met with fury on the street and from opposition politicians. It’s claimed that would “destroy democracy.” The Attorney General, who in Israel is more a functionary of the legal establishment and the Supreme Court than of the government, says that the government would have to get the Knesset to pass a special law if it wants to stop demonstrations.

Observant Jewish Israelis, of course, insist that it is unacceptable to forbid Jewish prayer in a Jewish state. And both sides are right, but they are both wrong in their insistence that they get their way in the face of the fact that both demonstrations and packed synagogues are known to effectively spread the virus.

The tracking mechanism of the Internal Security Service (Shabak) that is being used to track exposure and locate people violating quarantine is ineffective in these cases, since both demonstrators – just for that reason – and synagogue-goers leave their cellphones at home.

The government could not stand against the pressure, so it punted and appointed a “professional” committee to come up with limitations on demonstrations and public prayer that would allow both to continue. Unfortunately, these rules will be broken, because a large segment of each group does not respect any rules that come from the government. The police are outnumbered, and even though they can impose fines, have a hard time enforcing rules – and the more complicated they are, the harder it is.

Much of the Haredi educational system is operating, including schools for children and yeshivot and kollelim for adults, despite the closings decreed in “red zones.” Limits on the number of congregants in synagogues were widely broken during Rosh Hashana. Dozens of anti-Bibi and anti-lockdown protestors set up tables in front of the PM’s residence and had a festive meal. Over the weekend, a large group held what was essentially a beach party, allegedly under the rules permitting “demonstrations.”

In the Arab towns on both sides of the Green Line, the problem has been massive weddings, which sometimes go on for several days with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of participants. Mayors of Israeli Arab towns imposed nighttime curfews, which may have helped, although weddings are then sometimes held during the day.

In anything less than a Chinese-style totalitarian system, laws are upheld primarily by the willingness of citizens to obey them, with enforcement only needed for egregious violators. That mechanism is breaking down in Israel. A recent survey showed that 68% did not trust PM Netanyahu to manage the response to the virus, and 41% did not trust Dr. Gamzu. And Israelis tend to ignore people and rules that they don’t respect.

This is literally a question of life and death, both for Israelis and for their economy. A two-or-three week lockdown is bad enough, but two or three months would be intolerable. Either we get a handle on this epidemic, or we will be facing the choice between economic disaster or hundreds of deaths every day (today there were 31). Or if we are indecisive enough, maybe we’ll get both.

What needs to happen is that the government has to make simple rules, stick to them, and enforce them with severe penalties. No demonstrations, period. Close the synagogues, period. No weddings, period. And the people, Arabs and Jews both, need to follow the rules. In a few weeks, we can break the back of the epidemic, and then return to something closer to normalcy.

Continuing to take two steps forward and three steps back as we’ve been doing will only earn us a bunch of funerals – and no economy, either.

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