The Vaccine Blood Libel: The Wicked Lie Of ‘Medical Apartheid’

To be clear, Israel does not in any way discriminate by ethnicity or religion in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign. It has made headlines for vaccinating a larger percentage of its population than any country in the world; this includes both Jews and non-Jews.

While the rate of participation in both the Arab-Israeli community and some parts of the Orthodox Jewish community has lagged behind that of other parts of the population due to intrinsic social factors, as of March, Israeli health statistics estimated that among Israelis aged 50 or older, 68 percent of the country’s Arab citizens had been vaccinated at least once, and haredi Jews about 72 percent. These numbers compare with 89 percent among other Israelis.

Under the governing Oslo Accords, which constitute international law on the subject, public-health responsibility for most of the Palestinian population was transferred decades ago from Israel to the P.A. Yet even before the outbreak of the pandemic, opponents of Israel had accused it of “medical apartheid” for not providing Palestinians the same quality of medical care that Israelis receive. The opposite is the case.

The P.A. declared in 2019 that it would not allow patients to receive medical care in Israel, denying treatment to roughly 20,000 Palestinians annually, based on the number granted prior authorization by Israel. The P.A. took the action against its own citizens in retaliation for Israel’s adoption of $138 million in financial measures against the P.A.’s “pay for slay” policy.

Palestinian journalist Fathi Sabbah was painfully typical when he publicly complained that his daughter, Rima, was denied a permit by Ramallah officials for treatment of her rare blood disease. Yet Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian negotiator, was rushed to a Jerusalem hospital when he faced a COVID-19 respiratory crisis. Other elite Palestinian officials have received similar priority care.

The situation has continued well into the COVID-19 crisis, with Palestinian officials reiterating in December 2020 that they had not approached Israel for help in obtaining vaccines, and were planning to purchase them independently with the help of the international community.

“We are not a department in the Israeli Defense Ministry. We have our own government and Ministry of Health,” a P.A. official announced to The Jerusalem Post, “and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.” The Palestinians have sought several foreign sources, especially Russia, for scarce vaccines. In spite of the prohibitions on health outreach, Israel has managed to contribute a modest number of vaccines to the P.A.

Unforgivably worse, in May 2020, before the United Arab Emirate established formal relations with Israel, the P.A. refused $14 million worth of COVID-19 supplies donated by Dubai with U.N. facilitation, arrogantly explaining that the Etihad airplane transporting the supplies should not have landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport, the nearest to Ramallah.

At a time when the world was scrambling, the P.A. refused urgent medical supplies intended to stem the spread among its people, because it did not like the airport to which the supplies were delivered. A P.A. official told reporters, “Palestinians refuse to be a bridge [for Arab countries] seeking to have normalized ties with Israel.”