Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) accused Israel of being "racist" for not distributing coronavirus vaccines to the Palestinian territories, despite the fact that the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and the Gaza Strip is run by the US-designated terrorist organization Hamas.
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"I think it's really important to understand Israel is a racist state and that they would deny Palestinians, like my grandmother, access to a vaccine, that they don't believe that she's an equal human being that deserves to live, deserves to be able to be protected [from] this global pandemic," Tlaib told Democracy Now in an interview on Tuesday. "And it's really hard to watch as this apartheid state continues to deny their own neighbors, the people that breathe the same air they breathe, that live in the same communities."
Rep. @RashidaTlaib on Israel not vaccinating Palestinians:
"It's really important to understand that Israel is a racist state, in that they would deny Palestinians like my grandmother access to a vaccine, that they don't believe she's an equal human being who deserves to live." pic.twitter.com/vPCeXjdqrZ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 19, 2021
Tlaib said that Israel "has no intention" of helping Palestinian Arabs overcome the coronavirus pandemic, and that the United States is "enabling" it to do so.
"They have the power to distribute that vaccine to the Palestinian people, their own neighbors, again, feet away from where they live, many of which, again, could expose them and their family and it doesn't," she said. "If anything, it just reiterates what the Palestinian people and even human-rights groups have been telling us, is that this is an apartheid state."
Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum responded in a video posted to Twitter, saying: "We didn't do enough, we did too much, enough's enough! The Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords close to 30 years ago, where they agreed to take responsibility for their public health issues; Israel cannot be eternally blamed for THEIR mishandling of THEIR resources."
"We didn't do enough, we did too much, enough's enough! The Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords close to 30 years ago, where they agreed to take responsibility for their public health issues; Israel cannot be eternally blamed for THEIR mishandling of THEIR resources" pic.twitter.com/ZGLBcXSObq
— פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) January 18, 2021
Hassan-Nahoum is the co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council. She holds Jerusalem's foreign affairs portfolio and is working toward increasing business opportunities between Israeli and Emirati companies.
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Since Tlaib was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018, Tlaib has spouted anti-Jewish rhetoric and supported the BDS movement against Israel. She was re-elected to office in the Nov. 3 elections.
Under the Oslo Accords, the PA is responsible for civilian affairs, including healthcare, in areas under its jurisdiction.
Also on Tuesday, the PA said it expects to receive the first batch of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine by the weekend, which it hopes to administer to 50,000 residents by March.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
