Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 15, 2021

02/15 Links Pt2: Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop in Symptomatic COVID-19 Cases With Pfizer Vaccine; With Israel’s skies closed, 600 athletes arrive for judo contest

From Ian:

Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop in Symptomatic COVID-19 Cases With Pfizer Vaccine

Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.

Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.

The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.

“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.

He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who have been tabulating national data, said on Sunday that a sharp decline in hospitalization and serious illness identified earlier among the first age group to be vaccinated — aged 60 or older — was seen for the first time in those aged 55 and older.

Sheba researcher: Antiparasitic drug reduces length of COVID-19 infection

An Israeli tropical-disease expert says he has new proof that a drug used to fight parasites in third-world countries could help reduce the length of infection for people who contract coronavirus.

Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, last week completed a clinical trial of the US Food and Drug Administration-approved drug ivermectin, a broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent that has also been shown to fight viruses.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study included 100 people with mild to moderate cases of the disease who were not hospitalized for the virus. It tested whether ivermectin could shorten the viral shedding period, allowing them to test negative for coronavirus and leave isolation in only a few days.

According to his still unpublished data, Schwartz said the drug was shown to help “cure” people of the virus within just six days. Moreover, the chances of testing negative for coronavirus were three times higher for the group who received ivermectin than the placebo, he told The Jerusalem Post.

“From a public-health point of view, the majority of patients with corona are mild cases, and 90% of these people are isolated outside of the hospital,” Schwartz said. “If you have any kind of drug that can shorten the duration of the infectiousness of these patients, that would be dramatic, as then they will not infect others.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci wins Israel’s prestigious $1m. Dan David Prize for 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci has won the $1 million Dan David Prize for “defending science” and advocating for vaccines now being administered worldwide to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The Israel-based Dan David Foundation on Monday named President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser as the winner of one of three prizes. It said he had earned the recognition over a lifetime of leadership on HIV research and AIDS relief, as well as his advocacy for the vaccines against COVID-19.

In its statement, the private foundation did not mention former president Donald Trump, who undermined Fauci’s follow-the-science approach to the pandemic. But it credited Fauci with “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging COVID crisis.”

Fauci, 80, has served seven presidents and has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.

A tale of two Presidents (and Israel)

Jewish newspapers were aghast in March 1948 at the news that Harry Truman had reversed the US position on the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

Truman's daughter later said that he really didn't reverse his position:

Margaret Truman, in Harry S. Truman (New York, William Morrow & Company, 1973) asserts that her father never formally committed himself to the trusteeship plan (page 387). She quotes on page 388 from her father’s calendar for March 19 to the effect that the Austin statement represented the State Department pulling the rug from under him, that the State Department had reversed his Palestine policy and that with the Secretary and Under Secretary away, the third and fourth levels of the Department had succeeded in cutting his throat. Miss Truman notes on page 389 that not even in his memoirs did the President feel free to tell the whole story, although he hinted at it.

In Truman's actual press conference when he made the announcement, he said that this was meant to be a delay in partition, not a reversal:

Q. You are still, sir, in favor of partition at some future date?

THE PRESIDENT. That is what I am trying to say here as plainly as I can.

Whatever his intention, the response was immediate and angry.

A couple of weeks later a freshman congressman from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, denounced the new US policy to the local chapter of Jewish War Veterans.

Here are his notes for his speech:

One of the most discouraging aspects of recent American foreign policy is the unfortunate reversal of our ~~policy commitment~~ of our policy toward Palestine.

Since the end of first World War successive Presidents and Congress have 'reaffirmed' the solemn promise of the Balfour declaration.

The sudden reversal of our position in relation to the Partition of Palestine demands an explanation from the Administration.

There may be sufficient cause for the reversal in Palestine. If there is, we are entitled to know what it is.

Gal Berger of Israel's Kan News tweeted:

Breaking: The Palestinian Authority secretly sent vaccines to Jordan. These are 200 Sputnik vaccines that were transferred last Thursday via the Allenby Bridge to the Jordanian General Intelligence Agency. This is what Palestinian sources told Kan News.

It is unclear whether the vaccines are intended for the Jordanian defense establishment or for Palestinian officials living in Jordan.

In recent days, there has been growing criticism of the Palestinian Authority, which allegedly vaccinated senior officials, associates and official journalists, before it began vaccinating groups at risk in the general population.

To date, the authority has received enough vaccines to vaccinate only 6,000 people against the virus (12,000 vaccine doses) and as far as is known had begun vaccinating medical staff.

Why would the PA send the scarce vaccines into Jordan? The theory that it is going to Palestinian officials there makes the most sense.

Of course, the people complaining about how Israel is supposedly withholding vaccines will not say a word about how nepotism and politics, not need, seems to be driving Palestinian vaccinations.

(h/t ymedad)

02/15 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Navigating Israel's ship of state through the Biden storm; How UK gives annual nod to hate-filled Palestinian education

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Navigating Israel's ship of state through the Biden storm

In a media briefing Friday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to say whether the Biden views Israel as an ally.

Psaki's behavior was easy to understand. Although Israel is America's strongest and most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel cannot follow where the Biden administration is now leading. President Joe Biden's policy steps and foreign policy appointments since taking office have made it abundantly clear that his first priority is to return the US to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which was negotiated by Biden's top advisors when they served with him in the Obama administration is not a non-proliferation agreement. It is a blueprint for Iran to achieve independent military nuclear capability and regional hegemony.

Neither Israel nor the US's Arab allies in the Persian Gulf can partner with Biden and his team in advancing this policy. It puts them all in danger. This is the simple explanation for Biden's refusal to date to speak to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to other regional leaders. Quite simply, given his commitment to a policy that places their countries in jeopardy, Biden would prefer not to hear what they have to say.

Netanyahu adopted a three-pronged foreign policy when he was faced with a similar situation with Washington during the Obama presidency. After a four-year hiatus, the time has come to reinstate the policy.

The first component of that policy is a recognition that the US is irreplaceable. No other ally can provide Israel with the partnership that the US provides. That doesn't mean that Israel's government must bow and scrape before Biden and his advisors as they rush to empower Iran at Israel's expense. On the contrary. Facing a hostile administration, Israel must unapologetically stand up for itself and defend its interests and rights.

Think about this. Young US Jews are systematically harassed, attacked and ostracized on campuses by BDS goons. And @DanielBShapiro says it's RACIST for Jews to oppose Biden's placement of these BDS thugs in posts where they can turn their hatred into official US policy!
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) February 15, 2021

My Telephone’s Not Ringing

There is genuine concern in Israel about several of Biden’s top advisers, in particular U.S. envoy to Iran Rob Malley, widely seen to be soft on Iran and less than sympathetic to Israel’s security concerns. There are also, though, significant yings to Malley’s yang, key among them the widely respected Secretary Antony Blinken, and others.

Which leads us to the second tweet. Jumping into the “phone call” fray two days after Danon, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, tweeted a sensible thread stating the obvious; that Biden assumed leadership of the free world at a particularly tempestuous time and was personally taking on only the most pressing and urgent domestic and global matters, reflected in the order of his days and his calls (well, with that Canada exception, eh?)

On Saturday night, the phone call question was put to Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Gilad Erdan, on the most-watched post-Shabbat political talk show in Israel. His response, was, well, exactly what one might expect. A seasoned political operative, Erdan, with a bemused countenance, told the interviewer that the conversation is not so important.

“Until there isn’t one,” she ricocheted.

As he must do, Erdan focused on the many sidebar conversations that have taken place at the highest levels between the most senior Israeli and Biden administration officials in State, Defense, and the NSA. The well-oiled relationship between the US and Israel is humming along nicely, Erdan reassured. No need for any concern.

Biden is also sensitive to the fact that Israel is in perpetual election mode and would not want to appear to be boosting a particular candidate. But, that seems to be a chronic feature of the Israeli condition, making it almost irrelevant.

Truth is, for the last four years Israel had become accustomed to being treated as a constant priority in the Oval Office, with the formidable and combined muscle of Ambassadors Friedman and Dermer, Jared Kushner brought to bear, combined with Trump’s reported lack of discipline in his approach to, well, everything.

If there is a message in the non-phone call phone call, it is likely far less dramatic than some may be thinking, and more like: “You’re important, Israel, but perhaps not always the most important.

Let’s hope so.

JN INVESTIGATION: How UK gives annual nod to hate-filled Palestinian education

British taxpayers are continuing to pay for a Palestinian education system in which school pupils are routinely taught incitement, hatred of Israel and glorification of terrorism. Many of the textbooks are written by vetted officials, whose salaries are paid by the UK.

Despite numerous assurances from the Palestinian education minister, detailed reports from the Israel-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) show that as recently as September last year, Palestinian school students were still learning maths by adding up the number of ‘martyrs’, including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres. The curriculum is taught in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Not only does Britain continue to pay – in the past five years it has spent an estimated £105 million on Palestinian education professionals, including on the salaries of teachers who write the textbooks – but it appears to have a blind spot when it comes to challenging the Palestinians on the content of those books.

The UK and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have a Memorandum of Understanding, or MoU, which supposedly commits the Palestinians not only to “uphold the principle of non-violence”, but to take action against “incitement to violence, including addressing allegations of incitement in the educational curriculum”.

Money paid by Britain to the Palestinian partner is supposedly contingent on the PA’s performance on “curriculum reform”.

The New York Times published a feel-good story about how the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem has a program where ten year old religious Jewish kids play and learn along with ten year old Arabs who live in east Jerusalem.

As is often the case with the mainstream media, the real story is in what they choose not to report.

For the most part, Israeli Jews have always thirsted to be friends with their Arab neighbors, across the street and across the Middle East. There have been many such programs in Israel, some homegrown and some financed by the EU or the US - sports programs, support groups. scientific programs.

The Palestinians have always been dead-set against these programs. They regard them with the worst possible insult: "normalization."

Over this past weekend, there was an conference held by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean. Because Israel sent a delegation, the Algerian delegation quit the conference.

Palestinian groups praised the Algerians, saying, "Confronting normalization in all its forms is a moral, Arab and religious duty." Palestinian officials joined in.

Also this past weekend, there was a forum against normalization with Israel with participants from across the Arab world. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the PLO Central Council who is considered a moderate, said, "Normalization constitutes a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people."

Palestinians are planning later this month the " the first international conference to resist normalization with the Israeli occupation."

For years, the Palestinian leadership has been against any of the peace programs exactly as described by the New York Times - because they are "normalization."

Palestinian schools - including those operated by UNRWA - refused to participate in the "Seeds of Peace" program, a program that now-President Biden has endorsed. The reason? Because any joint Israeli-Palestinian project, unless it is designed to eventually destroy Israel, is considered "normalization."

And normalization translates to humiliation and shame, in Palestinian-speak.

Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah organization is against any sort of Palestinian/Israeli peace program. Yet it is funded by the EU.

There are numerous examples of how even the thought of friendship between Palestinians and Jews is anathema to most Palestinians.

The only people who oppose programs like the Bible Lands Museum's are Palestinians and their supporters. That is the real story - and it is a story that is rarely broached by the mainstream media.

Here's another news story that would have been literally unthinkable eight months ago.

From The Daily Tribune (Bahrain):

As Jewish life continues to flourish and grow in the Gulf, a first-of-its-kind association has been formed to boost their development.

On Monday, local Jewish communities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar announced they had come together to form the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (AGJC).

The AGJC is a network of Jewish communities from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries who are developing Jewish life in the region. While each community is independent, they share a common goal and vision: for Jewish life in the GCC to flourish for the benefit of both residents and visitors.

The organization includes Jews in countries that have no formal relations with Israel.

The webpage of the AGJC includes things we never thought we'd see:

Even though only two of the Jewish communities listed are from countries that have formal relations with Israel, none of this would be possible without the Abraham Accords - just another indication of the huge impact made by peace between Israel and the UAE/Bahrain.

The story is being reported in Arab media without any negative or antisemitic overtones - again, something that would be virtually unthinkable not long ago.

Stop Palestinian children being recruited as soldiers

Meet Anas and Saad Al-Skafi. They were twins who fought for Islamic Jihad.

Their obituaries on the Islamic Jihad military wing website today. You can see that they were born on December 5, 1996 - and they died on July 20, 2014.

Which means they were 17 years old.

They are only two of the child soldiers that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah routinely use. As recently as last month a 17 year old was killed as he attempted to stab an IDF soldier

There are dozens of examples of children who have been recruited to attack Israelis or to fight in Gaza terror armies.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad openly brag about their summer camp paramilitary programs.

This week is the second annual Palestinian Child Soldiers week, where petitions are sent to human rights groups to raise awareness on this illegal practice. As the PCS Week literature says:

● According to the 2007 Paris Principles, any use of minors (17 years of age or younger) in any military endeavours, by state or non-state actors, is rejected by the international community and is immoral. For decades, Palestinian minors have been used in varying military capacities, by groups that includes but is not limited to the PLO, Hamas, PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The military positions that have been held include but are not limited to: combat soldiers, suicide bombers, terrorists, military tunnel diggers, mules for IEDs and munitions, human shields, frontline skirmishers in mass organized riots, couriers of messages, and spies and lookouts.
● The goal of PCS Week is to bring awareness to and end the use of Palestinian minors in militancy. For decades, the systemic issue has been ignored or brushed off as unrelated individual incidents. Without pressure or consequences for using this practice, systemic Palestinian child militancy has flourished.

● The Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers calls upon UNICEF to demand that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PLO, and PFLP to operate in accordance with the 2007 Paris Principles, and end the systemic use of Palestinian children in military efforts of any type.

You can send a letter to UNICEF at the site.

Cartoon of the Day: What would Ruffalo do?

02/14 Links: David Collier: Lies and more lies. PSC and the viral BDS fake news circus; Wanted: Christians to declare to the World Council of Churches 'not in our name'!

From Ian:

David Collier: Lies and more lies. PSC and the viral BDS fake news circus

I am just coming to the end of a project that has taken almost a year and had promised myself that I would not get distracted in the final stretch. But when this week highlighted just how badly anti-Israel activism is dependant on fake news and lies, I decided to take a slight detour to share it with you.

Divestment and the lies of BDS
The boycott movement against Israel is a complete failure. Israel’s hi-tech economy is booming (Covvid aside – tourism was booming too) and BDS has nothing to show for 16 years of effort but a few activists taking selfies next to avocados on a supermarket shelf.

Sure, in confined political student circles, 14 students can force through a pro-BDS vote whilst the 22000 non politically active students on campus are busy with their actual studies, but in the real world – all of these students use Israeli hi-tech to communicate with each other.

BDS is a noise that spreads antisemitism, demonises Zionism, and hurts Jews in the diaspora but it doesn’t actually do damage to Israel. Worse than this, where it does have some effect, it just ends up hurting Palestinians.

Because of this failure, what the BDS movement is forced to do is engage an absurd fake news strategy – any divestment of any Israeli stock or product for any reason – is promoted as a BDS victory.

For example – even when a football club changes kit supplier – something they all do every few years- if it is the brand of kit used by the Israeli team – BDS will falsely claim it is a ‘divestment’. In the end, the embarrassed club can even be forced to issue a statement rejecting the claim. This happened to Luton Town FC just last year. Think for a while how pathetic this all is.

And if the evidence is not even there, they make it all up anyway. BDS and toxic organisations such as the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign just love to spread lies. It is all they have.

The latest PSC fiction
This week provided a perfect example. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign ran with a story that the East Sussex Pension fund had divested from Elbit, a successful Israeli arms company.

The news went around. The official BDS movement bragged about it, the thugs at Palestine Action sang about it, and Middle East Monitor wrote an article in celebration.

Ben Jamal, the hapless director of the PSC followed suit. Incredibly, an industry magazine, ‘Pensions Age‘ ran with the story too, in an article written by Jack Gray, their Brighton-based ‘News Editor‘.

Except of course the story is simply not true.

Christian Post: Wanted: Christians to declare to the World Council of Churches 'not in our name'!

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has put on its theological anti-Semitic brass knuckles in its long-standing war against the Jewish State. The time has come for Christians to declare “Not in our name.” For their good, more than ours.

Rev. Frank Chikane, moderator of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, lost no time in a recent Zoom call to ask Christianity to revert to its worst medieval Jew-hatred. For those who will not work towards delegitimizing the entire system (aka the State of Israel) that facilitates daily “brutality” against Palestinians, he intoned a curse, “The blood of the people of Palestine will be upon them.” This was an obvious reference to Matthew’s “His blood be upon us and on our children!” These words were used for centuries to prop up the charge that it was specifically Jewish sin – not the sins of all humanity – that caused the Crucifixion. That charge of deicide was the most important source of violence against Jews, persisting till today. Rev. Chikane is not concerned that his words might inspire violence, since he regards the potential targets not as human but as “demons,” the same demons responsible for apartheid in his South Africa. And it’s worse this time, he said, because these demons have invited other demons to make the Palestinian struggle more difficult.

“Every day people get killed” – a blatant fabrication, unless he means those who are stopped in their attempt to thrust knives into Israeli civilians. He had not a single syllable of criticism for those, nor the ones who try lobbing rockets into Israeli kindergartens.

Rev. Chikane didn’t invent the WCC’s anti-Israel policy, he just upgraded and supercharged it with New Testament imagery. Just three years after Auschwitz, the WCC – which claims 500 million Christians in its affiliates – chose not support the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, warning instead that its political complexity might invite more global anti-Semitism. In the decades since then, they have strived mightily to convert their analysis into prophecy. It’s reaction to the Jewish state’s astounding Six Day War in 1967, when it defeated surrounding armies whose announced intention was to drive the Jews into the sea, was to blame Israel for the immediate threat of annihilation by its neighbors, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel was faulted for allegedly inspiring the fears of its neighbors because of Israel’s “dynamism and possible expansion.” If those darn Jews hadn’t been so successful in nation-building, their neighbors wouldn’t have to murder them…

New report by human-rights group responds to anti-Israeli bias perpetuated at UNHRC

Geneva-based independent human-rights group UN Watch published a detailed report in advance of the 46th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to open this month on Feb. 22 in Geneva and run until March 23. The study debunks more than 20 different major accusations leveled by numerous different countries—accusing Israel of violating Palestinians’ religious freedom, damaging their health and practicing racism.

In its first-ever report that thoroughly fact-checked and responded to the UNHRC’s anti-Israel claims, UN Watch released its 58-page “Agenda Item 7: Country Claims & UN Watch Responses” examining 23 accusations made by various countries under Agenda Item 7 against Israel in the period covering the six UNHRC sessions held in 2019 and 2020.

According to report researcher and writer Dina Rovner, legal adviser of UN Watch, the paper sets the record straight regarding distorted statements, including: “Israel hinders the Palestinian fight against COVID-19;” “Israel has occupied Palestinian territory for 70 years;” “Israel commits apartheid against the Palestinians;” “Israel damages Palestinian holy sites” and “Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal.”

“The truth is very different from what is being put on the record at the United Nations,” she told JNS. “When Israel is accused of hindering the Palestinian fight against COVID-19, it is actually helping and coordinating with the Palestinians. When Israel is accused of violating the rights of Syrians on the Golan, the opposite is the case—the Golan Syrians have more rights and freedoms than their counterparts in Syria, and are flourishing economically. Israel damages Palestinian holy sites? No. History shows that only under Israeli control are the holy sites of Jews, Muslims and Christians fully protected.”

According to Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director and editor of the report (with contributions from managing editor of UN Watch Simon Plosker), it is being sent to all U.N. ambassadors in New York and Geneva “to make clear to all delegates who tell lies that, from now on, their countries will be called out by name before the international community and refuted with the facts.”

UN Watch has also submitted several written statements that will be circulated to delegates as official U.N. documents of the session, calling out the lie that Israel’s vaccination campaign—one of the best-run in the world—is “racist”; exposing UNRWA teachers’ incitement to terrorism and anti-Semitism; and documenting the Palestinians’ illegal use of child soldiers.

.@UNRWA contradicts itself on what a "refugee" is in a single slide

UNRWA tweeted out a series of slides about what they call "Palestine refugees."

The main slide shows how UNRWA lies.

The first paragraph is the UNRWA definition of "Palestine refugees," not the actual definition of "refugees" which is defined by the Refugee Convention and is universally accepted as the only definition of refugee. But let's leave that aside for now and assume that the first paragraph is an accurate definition of what UNRWA calls "Palestine refugees."

The second paragraph goes on to say that UNRWA provides services to people who meet the definition and who register. "Palestine refugees" who moved to the Gulf or Europe might still be considered "refugees" but they are not eligible for services since they live outside areas that UNRWA operates.

It says that in order to receive UNRWA services one must fulfill three conditions: meet the definition, register with UNRWA and show need for assistance.

(This is false too - UNRWA never did a census of who was an actual refugee, and it provided services to whoever said they were refugees. Beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands of "registered Palestine refugees" in Lebanon who have moved out of Lebanon and yet UNRWA still counts them. But again, we'll leave that for now.)

Then it says that descendants are also eligible for registration.

At this point, someone reading this would think that descendants aren't considered refugees themselves - because they clearly do not meet the definition in the first paragraph - but UNRWA provides services to them as well as actual, defined refugees. The last sentence in paragraph 2 supports this interpretation.

But then the final, highlighted paragraph contradicts everything said beforehand. Suddenly, the descendants are considered "refugees" themselves - even though they do not meet any definition of refugee!

The number of refugees according to the definition can only decrease - through death, through becoming self-sufficient or seemingly from becoming citizens of other countries.

Yet UNRWA is saying that the number of "refugees" has grown by a factor of over seven - and it can only increase!

This one slide shows how UNRWA lies, with its own words, by changing the definition of "refugee" at their whim, whichever one will get them more money and sympathy.

Here we have proof positive that the agency is built on lies, and continues the lies to this very day.

Last week, there were more articles claiming that Israel is withholding vaccines from Palestinians.

None of them mentioned whether Palestinian health authorities actually requested vaccines.

Because when they do, Israel complies. As it should under the Geneva Conventions.

Walla today reports that the Palestinian Authority requested that Israel transfer tens of thousands of vaccines and it is expected to be approved:

Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and Defense Minister Bnei Gantz are expected to approve in the coming days a request submitted by the Palestinian Authority for the transfer of tens of thousands of vaccine doses to the Gaza Strip.

According to senior IDF officers, thousands of doses have so far been transferred. Now, the request that was sent to Israel a few days ago refers to vaccines that the Palestinian Authority purchased with its own money or vaccines that it received as a donation from the World Health Organization, the European Union and Russia.

"Israel has approved and assisted in the various waves of the corona to transfer medical equipment to hospitals in the Strip," said senior officers involved in the details. They added that "corona vaccines are no different from regular drug or flu vaccines."