Misrepresentation of Israel’s Covid 19 vaccination programme

ByJohn Minto

 It is unacceptable to have Israel’s vaccination programme constantly misrepresented in the New Zealand media.

Israel is regularly being paraded as the world leader in vaccination rates but this hides an ugly, racist truth. Israel is refusing to vaccinate 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control in Gaza and the West Bank Palestinian territories.

These people are refused vaccinations because they are Palestinian while Jews living in illegal Israeli settlements nearby are vaccinated. Israel’s actual vaccination rates are much lower than claimed and reported here.

If it were Jews being denied vaccinations because they were Jews there would, quite rightly, be an international uproar. So why no uproar when it is Palestinians who are the victims of Israel’s medical apartheid?

Article 56 of the Geneva Convention makes plain the occupying power (Israel)  –

“must adopt and supply the prophylactic and preventative measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics in cooperation with local authorities.”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ignores this. He claims it is Palestinians’ responsibility for health services under the Oslo Accords but this is just a fig leaf for racism because, as the United Nations says, the Geneva Convention overrides any other agreements.

A United Nations special report last month makes Israel’s responsibilities clear:

“Morally and legally, differential access to necessary health care amid the worst global health crisis in a century is unacceptable…

The denial of equal access to health care, such as on the basis of ethnicity or race, is discriminatory and unlawful” 

Why is none of this being reported here?

Is it because the media implicitly accepts that the human rights for Palestinians are less important than the human rights for Jews?  Or is it the self-censorship of the media over Middle East issues because claims of anti-semitism are often fired at reporting critical of Israel (neatly summed up in this Leunig cartoon)?

Either way the media is misreporting the situation to the New Zealand public. We deserve better.

I would appreciate receiving your response to this letter.

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40 Comments

  1. Which group owns the bulk of the international banking system and has enormous influence over the parts it doesn’t own?

    Gosh, I ‘can’t remember’ but I think it starts with J. Definitely not the Palestinians.

    If you own the banking system you can do pretty much as you please, and tell others what to say and do.

    1. And people like you are why the right wing get away with accusing the left of being antisemitic

      1. Facts are facts and they have no left/right agenda of themselves, so don’t try to apply one.

          1. Attack and insult a blogger is the standard pro Zionist approach. They have little else.

  3. Sigh!

    Explaining is losing, John 😉

    Pertinent facts:
    1. Israel was the first country in the world to complete the first round of vaccinations
    2. This includes 1.5 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens
    3. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is a separate entity that has its own medical funding via the UN
    4. Seeing the PA was in a chaotic mess, the Israelis offered the PA vaccines but the PA refused
    5. Palestinians have now secured all the vaccines they need but still not all received their first injection
    6. The last time the PA had an election was 1994: It is a corrupt dictatorship that benefits only a few. Just like all the other Muslim states in the region.

    1. 3 (really), 4 (2000 Moderna vaccines only), 5 (only 20,000 from Russia) 6 (2005-2006) need serious fact checking.

    2. Your as honest as a Sharpiro when it comes to facts Andrew.,,, did you notice how he kept trying to lie in the BBC interview ,,,, about his exceedingly racists ‘Arabs like to live in shit,’ opinion

      But from the 24 minute mark your latest effort is show for the con job it is… blockading vaccines is more like it https://youtu.be/xTqk3voqcOs

      Its pretty damn obvious our media is involved in Dirty Politics again.

      For a right wing racist government ,,,, again.

      Pushing a biased narritive for their new right wing Dirty Politics associates.

      The Benjamin netanyahu level of racisim behind the project is also against many jews who object to whats going on
      https://youtu.be/SjhHhL_15Nw
      “Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi”

      Did you notice how Shapiro kept on trying to lie on the BBC interview,,, claiming he’d apologized for his racist tweet about arabs liking to live in sewage and blow things up ….

    3. Since every one of your statements is incorrect, it is time you STARTED explaining! Where is your evidence, and is it any more legitimate that the propagandist links that Gaby occasionally supplies when cornered?

  4. Israel claims

    1. not to be an occupying power in Gaza, having withdrawn from it (the policy is to have this area become a Palestinian state once its government recognises Israel).

    2. they say the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power is required to provide vaccines to the inhabitants of the territories under its control, does not apply because it claims the West Bank is not occupied, but disputed.

    This allows them to take land (the 1949 law only prevents lands being taken off other states by war – Jordan never annexed this land while they occupied it 1948-1967). For now they want as much of this land as they can get without any Arabs on it while governnace of the Arab population areas is handed over to the Palestinian Authority “bantustan” – they do not want the Palestinian Arabs to be voters within Israel that they have any responsibility for (though they are placed in Israeli prisons via Israeli courts if they resist land theft).

  5. The BBC originally reported that the Oslo Accord obliged Israel to provide the vaccines (not true). Their correction was to this point, as the Oslo Accord enabled the PA self governance in this area.

    The BBC has never said, then or now, that Israel is not obliged to provide the vaccines. The claims that it is comes under a Geneva Convention as applies to occupied territories.

    As you well know Israel claims the WB is a disputed territory and not an occupied one (and Gaza is not occupied) and thus the GC does not apply. Most of the world sees the WB, as not part of Israel and therefore occupied.

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