The criminal neglect of Palestinian lives under occupation – and covid-19
JVL Introduction
The author, Dr. Mustapha Barghouthi is a physician who serves on the Palestinian health committee that deals with Covid-19. He is also a former Palestinian minister.
He is suffering from Covid-19.
You can see an interview with him on 5th January on Democracy Now: “Medical Apartheid”: Israeli Vaccine Drive Excludes Millions of Palestinians in Occupied Territories
See our earlier report Horrific discrimination against Palestinians under occupation with regard to COVID-19 vaccines.
Added 14th Jan: See also this fantastic webinar organised by Yachad and the New Israel Fund with Ran Goldstein, Director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and leading Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard, discussing vaccine access and legal responsibilities in the occupied Palestinian territories
This article was originally published by the New York Times on Wed 13 Jan 2021. Read the original here.
Israel’s Vaccination Drive Is Going Great. But We’re Being Sidelined.
The country can’t reach herd immunity without vaccinating Palestinians.
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The Labour leadership has abandoned the Palestinians. I read today they will not be pursuing progressive policies in future. We are on the way back to the days of New Labour. In other words there can be no hope for change. I have resigned my membership after over 60 years . My two children have done the same ( without any advice from me).
As a British Jew I feel ashamed and disgusted. Still struggling whether to leave the Labour party or stay and oppose the leadership.
Which Palestinian aid charity would Dr Barghouthi – or one who has worked with aid agencies there – most recommend ?
I have no words to describe the cruelty and the racism that the Israel is treating the Palestinians. And I am so ashamed of labour leader to keep silence on this artocity.
Steve Mitchell: solidarity!
I am not Jewish, yet I too feel ashamed – as a human being: I am (still) a Labour member and I ask, how can people look the other way, pass their fellow human in the street when that person is in need? And even on a purely selfish level, how can one look in the bathroom mirror without blinking, when one’s own household is healthy whilst the family next-door suffers?
My advice to Michel Trainer is to stay in the Labour Party and to publicly denounce the inhuman policies of the leadership until he gets thrown out as a “fringe Jew”, to use the terminology of the Board of Deputies. That is my policy and I am convinced that at present it is the most effective strategy that an individual Jewish socialist can take.
The most important thing is NEVER to allow oneself to self-censor on account of one’s membership of the LP. The anonymous inquisitors of the LP governance and legal unit tried to investigate me once on spurious accusations of antisemitism and were obliged to crawl back into their hovel. I expect a new attack by these charlatans at any moment, but I care not. If I am expelled, I will continue to support and collaborate with socialists both within and outside the LP, but my freedom to denounce and campaign against the bigots and unprincipled opportunists within the party will only be increased, because I will no longer be subject to party rules. The irony of the Labour leadership’s repression of freedom of expression within CLP’s is that it is counterproductive: the more that CLP’s begin to resemble totalitarian shell structures, the more political discourse migrates to local social media groups which include socialists both within and outside the LP.
Incidentally, being called a “fringe Jew” by the BOD should be regarded as a tremendous compliment. Almost all the major Jewish icons of universal human culture from Spinoza, Marx and Freud to Einstein, Bohr and Chomsky were “fringe Jews” who will be honoured long after the Zionist cult has vanished from consciousness, a historical anomaly studied perhaps by specialist historians in the same manner as the bizarre 17th century messianic cult of Sabbatai Zevi.