Spreading the perfect libel
Palestinians can only look on as their health becomes a political tool and their leadership is given more leeway and excuses to continue its intransigence.
IT’S the perfect story expertly packaged to deceive anyone with a heart. Rich Israel, with its world-class medical system, is vaccinating its own, including those ever-problematic West Bank settlers – while the Palestinians, rife with coronavirus infections, are being left out.
You don’t have to have an opinion about who is right or wrong in the broader conflict, or on terrorism, or on Palestinian self-determination, to believe it.
You simply have to have compassion for fellow human beings.
Propelled around the world by the usual agitators as well as so-called trusted organisations and outlets such as Amnesty International and The Guardian, which screamed earlier this month “Palestinians excluded from Israeli COVID vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers”, this latest libel has found its feet quickly.
The problem is, like all anti-Israel canards, it is completely devoid of truth or fact.
Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for the health of those living under its rule, including vaccinations.
The image being painted of a cash-strapped PA that can’t afford COVID-19 jabs omits the billions in aid that has been squandered by its corrupt leaders and its “pay for slay” program that financially rewards terrorists who attack and kill Jews. More to the point, the PA said late last year it did not even want Israel’s help in procuring vaccinations.
And despite that, Israel has clandestinely supplied doses.
But with these facts presumably inconvenient to the story some outlets wish to portray, they have been either omitted or severely downplayed.
Even The Australian, usually more balanced on Israel, ran a Wall Street Journal piece headlined “Israel races ahead with COVID-19 vaccines, while Palestinians wait”, saying it raises “political and public-health questions about Israel’s responsibilities to the Palestinians”.
The article even absurdly claims that Israel still occupies Gaza – which it has not for 15 years.
Sadly, the biggest losers out of all this are Palestinians themselves. Longing for a better future, they can only look on as their health becomes a political tool and their leadership is given more leeway and excuses to continue its intransigence.
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