TheDefiantOne
Gold Member
- May 29, 2021
- 1,076
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translation: YOU cannot refute the FACTS presented that are contrary to your previous assertions and contentions.Well, Defiant, you do live up to your name. Defiant under any show to the contrary.Nice try, but "some" are not the majority. Case in point:Some South Africans do not agree with your "plethora of documented cases" . They went to Israel. Where was the Apartheid they were taught about, the one worse than the one they lived themselves?Cannot say it in your own words? What does that sentence mean?"Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine"[From your source (what many Anti Israel Posters will not discuss]Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.For your education:Israel has spent every penny building a state of the art nation that doesnât need to beg for resources from other nations.I presume you can count what we and the UN have given the "Palis" since the 50s.Billions?All the billions given to the "Palis" and they can't get vaccines?Over the past two years, Scientific Americanhas published a series of biased attacks on Israel, even accusing Israel of âvaccine apartheid and medical apartheid.â Such actions are not surprising considering that in 2021, a Senior Editor at Scientific American tweeted that âIsrael is an apartheid state and Zionism is white supremacy. #FreePalestine.â
As I wrote last week in The Algemeiner, a June 2, 2021, column â titled âAs Health Care Workers, We Stand in Solidarity with Palestineâ â was removed from the Scientific American website just hours after the publisher received a letter signed by more than 106 scientists and physicians, including three Nobel Laureates.
THE LETTER CRITICIZED SCIENTIFIC AMERICANEDITORS FOR PUBLISHING âONE-SIDED POLITICAL PROPAGANDA,â IGNORING âEASILY VERIFIED FACTS,â AND COVERING âIMPORTANT HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES SUPERFICIALLY, INACCURATELY, AND PREJUDICIALLY.â A FULL TEXT OF THE NOW REMOVED COLUMN IS AVAILABLE HERE.
(full article online)
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âScientific Americanâ: A Publishing Home for Anti-Israel Hate and Propaganda - Algemeiner.com
Over the past two years, Scientific American has published a series of biased attacks on Israel, even accusing Israel of âvaccine apartheid and medical apartheid.â Such actions are not surprising considering that in 2021, a Senior Editor at Scientific American tweeted that âIsrael is an...www.algemeiner.com
NEWSLETTER
COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Israel: Successes, lessons, and caveats
Israel is a world leader in the race to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine. In this Special Feature, Medical News Today look at why the vaccine rollout has been so successful in Israel and discuss the controversies and equity issues related to the campaign.
EMMANUEL DUNAND/Getty Images
All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the United States has struggled to meet COVID-19 vaccine rollout goals, within just 2 weeks, Israel vaccinated almost 15% of the countryâs population of more than 9 million.
As of January 19, 2021, 25.6% of the Israeli population have received their first vaccine dose, and 550,000 people have received both doses.
To give some perspective, Israel is vaccinating residents at a rate of 32.4 people per 100, compared with 4.8 people per 100 in the U.S., and 7 per 100 in the United Kingdom.
But why exactly has the rollout been so successful in Israel? And what can we learn from this early success? In this Special Feature, we review what is known about Israelâs COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.
Early rollout successes
Israelâs success in rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine seems to be due to several factors influencing the access to and distribution of the vaccine.
The Israeli government started searching early on for a way to secure vaccine doses.
In June 2020, Israel became one of the first countries to sign a purchase agreement for a vaccine supply from Moderna. In November, the country announced additional vaccine deals with AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
The first Pfizer vaccine doses arrived in Israel on December 9, 2020, and vaccinations began on December 19, 2020. The country is still waiting for the other two vaccines.
Israelâs government also allegedly agreed to pay top dollar for vaccines and purchase millions of doses. Although the exact price is unknown, one official said that the price was about $30 per vaccine â double the average price abroad.
The makers of the vaccine that Israel is currently using â U.S. company Pfizer and German partner BioNTech â would not comment on the cost of the vaccine.
In exchange for an early, steady vaccine supply, the Israeli government also assured Pfizer that the countryâs rollout would offer quick, large-scale results, promising to give the company detailed patient information on those receiving the vaccine in Israel.
Israeli officials expected Israelâs vaccine rollout to be successful because the country is small but has a vast healthcare infrastructure. The country also has a well-developed, universal healthcare system that connects all residents to a national digital health network.
All residents also have insurance from semi-private healthcare maintenance organizations (HMOs) that run services throughout the country, even in rural, remote regions.
Israelâs centralized, digitized system makes it easier to track and access information and roll out national healthcare agendas, such as vaccination campaigns.
âIn a sense, Israel has become like a very large clinical trial,â Hadassah Medical Center virologist Dr. Rivka Abulafia-Lapid told The Times of Israel.
âBecause everyone in Israel belongs to an HMO, and their records are kept along with their background data, this means weâll get a good picture of responsiveness to the vaccine, in context of age, gender, and existing medical conditions,â Dr. Abulafia-Lapid added.
Distribution successes
Israelâs vaccine rollout success is also due in part to the handling of the vaccine and its delivery to citizens.
Those responsible for logistics have stored the vaccine doses underground near Israelâs main airport. They are in 30 large freezers, which are capable of holding 5 million doses.
Teams in Israel have also developed a way to repack doses from large, ultra-frozen pallets into insulated boxes roughly the size of a pizza box. Doing this has made it easier to distribute vaccine doses in smaller numbers and to remote sites.
Teams repack large vaccine pallets into bundles containing as few as 100 doses, which they then deliver to 400 vaccination centers. Healthcare professionals have also managed to obtain more vaccine doses out of each vial than Pfizer had initially advertised.
Pfizer have approved both of these processes.
Some 335 drive-through vaccination clinics also exist throughout Israel, allowing healthcare professionals to vaccinate larger groups of people quickly. On January 19, 2021, the country announced a new daily record of more than 210,000 vaccinations in 1 day.
Israel began vaccinating healthcare workers, teachers, people with medical conditions, and those over the age of 60 years. Now, the country is racing to vaccinate the entire population over the age of 16 years â equating to about 5.2 million people â by the end of March. As of January 20, Israel has started vaccinating residents over the age of 40 years.
At the time of writing, Israel has given at least one dose of the vaccine to more than 76% of the countryâs inhabitants who work as teachers, are over the age of 60 years, or have health risks.
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Controversies
Despite these achievements, some people in Israel are regularly demonstrating against the governmentâs handling of the pandemic.
Hailed as a way to restore normalcy â and save the economy â the government calls the COVID-19 vaccine rollout âOperation Back to Life.â Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that it will allow Israel to become the first country in the world to emerge from the pandemic.
However, it is less clear precisely how and when Israel will be able to revert to so-called normal life.
On January 19, the country reported a record high of more than 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day and a positivity rate above 10% for the first time in 3 months. Also, 30â40% of new cases are linked to the new COVID-19 variant that scientists first recognized in the U.K.
Israeli, currently in its third lockdown, also faces high levels of unemployment and a recession, but the authorities have extended the current nationwide lockdown until at least January 31.
Netanyahuâs political opponents also accuse the government of using the vaccine campaign for political gain before the upcoming election.
The country is on track to vaccinate everyone over the age of 16 years just 3 days before the election on March 23. In addition, the government is discussing postponing the election if infection rates stay high.
The government is also receiving criticism for not sharing enough details about what patient data it will share or how Pfizer will use the information.
Government officials only recently disclosed some terms of the deal, claiming that it will only share general data with Pfizer, such as data about the numbers of cases, serious cases, fatalities, and vaccinations, and each individualâs age and gender.
They also say that the data will help researchers assess and track herd immunity, with the results to feature in a recognized medical journal.
But Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, expressed her worries that anonymized patient data, including complete medical histories, will be shared.
Although they will not bear patient names or identifying markers, she said that it is possible to de-anonymize the files. Treating these personal data as though they belong to the government in this way is ânot ethically, not legally, and not morally
,â she added.
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Health equity issues
According to human rights groups, Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip do not have access to the vaccine and will not for a long time. Under the 4th Geneva Convention, occupying forces must provide healthcare to the populations of the territories they occupy.
Yet Palestinian officials seem reluctant to make a formal request to Israel to provide the vaccine, likely because asking for help from Israel is politically sensitive.
Also, the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s, which were meant to be a temporary road map to develop a Palestinian state, gave Palestinians responsibility for their healthcare.
Israelâs health minister reportedly told Sky News that the Palestinians simply need to âlearn how to take care of themselves.â
He said that Israel has provided advice, supplies, and medicine to its neighbors, adding that it is in Israelâs best interest to reduce Palestinian case numbers, as many Palestinians work in Israel.
But some international organizations condemn Israelâs failure to provide the vaccine equitably.
According to Saleh Higazi, Amnesty Internationalâs deputy regional director:
âIsraelâs COVID-19 vaccine program highlights the institutionalized discrimination that defines the Israeli governmentâs policy toward Palestinians. There could hardly be a better illustration of how Israeli lives are valued above Palestinian ones.â
The Palestinian government has arranged for vaccine shipments from four companies that should arrive this quarter. The state may also start receiving doses in February from the World Health Organizationâs (WHO) vaccine schemeTrusted Source for low-to-middle-income countries.
Another issue complicating the vaccine rollout is the reluctance and fear among the countryâs Arab and Orthodox populations regarding the vaccine and pandemic restrictions.
Vaccination rates are low among the Arab community in Israel.
Ultra-Orthodox communities are registering record high numbers of new cases of COVID-19. There are also reports of lax preventive restrictions in these communities, with some schools remaining open and multiple reports of large gatherings.
On January 20, the government announced the launch of a campaign to educate the Ultra-Orthodox community about pandemic risks and the importance of following the rules.How much aid does the U.S. give Israel?USA TODAY
www.usatoday.com
The United States has given Israel a total of $146 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding through 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which provides nonpartisan research to lawmakers. That makes it the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. (Other top recipients include Egypt and Afghanistan.
U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel
Successive Administrations, working with Congress, have provided Israel with significant
assistance in light of robust domestic U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic
goals in the Middle East; a mutual commitment to democratic values; and historicalties dating
from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel $146 billion (current, or
noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. At present, almost all U.S. bilateral aid to
Israel is in the form of military assistance, although from 1971 to 2007, Israel also received significant economic assistance.
Strategic Reasons for Continuing U.S. Support
There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel has advanced U.S. interest in the Middle East and beyond.
- Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine.
- Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check.
- Israelâs air force is predominant throughout the region.
- Israelâs frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet weapons.
- It has served as a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance, such as apartheid South Africa, the Islamic Republic in Iran, the military junta in Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisers have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara.
- Israelâs intelligence service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations.
- Israel has missiles capable of reaching as far as the former Soviet Union, it possesses a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, and it has cooperated with the U.S. military-industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters and anti-missile defense systems.
U.S. Aid Increases as Israel Grows Stronger
The pattern of U.S. aid to Israel is revealing. Immediately following Israelâs spectacular victory in the 1967 war, when it demonstrated its military superiority in the region, U.S. aid shot up by 450%. Part of this increase, according to the New York Times, was apparently related to Israelâs willingness to provide the U.S. with examples of new Soviet weapons captured during the war. Following the 1970-71 civil war in Jordan, when Israelâs potential to curb revolutionary movements outside its borders became apparent, U.S. aid increased another sevenfold. After attacking Arab armies in the 1973 war were successfully countered by the largest U.S. airlift in history, with Israel demonstrating its power to defeat surprisingly strong Soviet-supplied forces, military aid increased by another 800%. These increases paralleled the British decision to withdraw its forces from âeast of the Suez,â which also led to the massive arms sales and logistical cooperation with the Shahâs Iran, a key component of the Nixon Doctrine.
(full article online)
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Why the U.S. Supports Israel - Institute for Policy Studies
In the United States and around the world, many are questioning why, despite some mild rebukes, Washington has maintained its large-scale military, financial, and diplomatic support for the Israeli occupation in the face of unprecedented violations of international law and human rights standards...ips-dc.org
Since when is Wiki-pedia a reliable source of information? It's been DOCUMENTED to it's susceptibility to any members add ons.....it's fact checking leaves much to be desired. Small wonder you found what you needed to hear there.These....are your JVP members:Neither....there are Israelis who see a different approach: JVPâs Approach to ZionismA Jewish fascist or a zionist fascistWithout Likud, the Jews Are LickedI find this rather interesting:
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Arabs and Jews in Israel unite against Netanyahu and occupation
After an 11-day war that killed more than 240 Palestinians and 12 Israelis, a fragile ceasefire between the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Islamist Hamas militants that rule Gaza took hold early Friday morning.www.peoplesworld.org
The predatory Islamic beasts will see that as a sign of weakness and a signal to attack.
- The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California wrote in 2003 that "the mainstream Jewish community" viewed "Jewish Voice for Peace as a group of radical Jews who air dirty laundry by criticizing Israel when the Jewish state is under attack. Some go as far as to label the members self-hating Jews ."
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Jewish Voice for Peace - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Jewish Voice for Peace is a radical anti-Israel activist group that advocates for a complete economic, cultural and academic boycott of the state of Israel. JVP rejects the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragic dispute over land which has been perpetuated by a cycle of violence, fear, and distrust on both sides, in favor of the belief that Israeli policies and actions are motivated by deeply rooted Jewish racial chauvinism and religious supremacism.
JVP considers supporters of Israel, or even critics of Israel who do not hew to JVPâs own extreme views, to be complicit in Israelâs purported acts of racist oppression of Palestinians. JVP leaders believe that expressing support for Israel, or not challenging mainstream Jewish organizations that support Israel, must also be viewed as an implicit attack on people of color and all marginalized groups in the United States. JVPâs energetic proselytizing of this view â especially among other social justice groups -- has created a hostile environment for many progressive Jews. In a sense, JVP is extending its boycott agenda to include not just Israel but its American supporters as well.
More troubling, JVPâs dissemination of the view that Israel and its U.S. supporters are fundamentally racist oppressors of non-Jews has the effect of perpetuating the classic anti-Jewish stereotype of Jews as self-centered elitists, disdainful of non-Jews, who are focused on their own interests, sometimes at othersâ expense. Additionally, JVPâs ongoing insistence that virtually all criticism of Israel cannot be anti-Semitic gives cover to anti-Semites who couch their malice toward Jews as mere anti-Zionism.
You are being redirected...
www.adl.org
Now the ADL does a good job explaining why they find JVP a fringe element on the subject. Mind you, if it weren't for the plethora of documented cases regarding the zionistic bent justifying the apartheid treatment of Palestinians, JVP probably wouldn't exist.
But these things happen, so they do.
And I seem to recall a similar reaction when world respected humanitarian former President Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter: Israel's 'apartheid' policies worse than South Africa's
Note that Haaretz is an Israeli based paper that is no well liked by zionist or the Likund....but damned if they can fault their journalistic integrity.
âIâm deprived because of things that happened during apartheid,â Mokgomole told the audience at U.C. Davis. A member of the youth wing of the African National Congress, he spoke with a thick accent that he blamed on the subpar education received by many black South Africans.
âIâm here to reclaim my story, our narrative. We believe that organizations like BDS are abusing the word âapartheid,â abusing our story.â
Mokgomole was part of a U.S. speaking tour sponsored by the pro-Israel group StandWithUs in partnership with South Africa-Israel Forum. Branded âReclaiming My Story,â the tour has been featuring black South Africans defending Israel against charges of apartheid.
âIt irritates us that the apartheid analogy is used,â Benji Shulman, a white South African who accompanied the tour, told the audience in Davis. âI think it annoys all sorts of Jewish communities around the world, but the difference with the South African Jewish community is that [our country] invented the thing.â
Shulman said that black Africans like Mithi and Mokgomole â who defend Israel against accusations of apartheid â are effective advocates against the claim because they and their families personally suffered under the racist policies of the South African government.
Mokgomole reversed his stand on Israel after he was among the 11 protesters disciplined by university officials for disrupting the recital. At that point, he started looking more closely at the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and he found out there was a lot he needed to learn.
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Visiting South Africans reject apartheid label on Israel
Jamie Mithi, a law student in South Africa, was taken aback when a group of South African students aligned with the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement stormed the stage at the University of Witwatersrand in 2014 and disrupted a campus recital by Israeli-born German pianist...www.jweekly.com
Deploying the experience of Black South Africans to defend apartheid in Palestine is bad enough, but when set against the thriving pro-Palestine movement in South Africa, it becomes obscene. The African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Economic Freedom Fighters, the Pan African Congress, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the South African Federations of Trade Unions and many other sections of South African civil society have loudly condemned Israelâs treatment of Palestinians and acknowledged its similarity to Apartheid. While Zionist Black South Africans do exist, their influence outside of fundamentalist Christianity and the bourgeois Democratic Alliance party is minuscule compared with that of figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandelaâs family. Vashti | Israel is an apartheid state â and South Africans agree
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Vashti - Israel is an apartheid state â and South Africans agree
Using Black oppression to exonerate Israel isnât just immoral, itâs ahistorical.vashtimedia.com
But then, you have still not travelled to Israel and have not seen it with your own eyes, and continue to depend on anti Israel Christian, Muslims and even Jews to prove your point and continue to believe what you 100% have come to believe.
Your first sentence is just sour grapes. Your second paragraph is sheer smoke blowing BS...because by your "standard" anytime your facts are disproved or contradicted, you state that unless one has been present in said area/country/region, one has no say in the matter and therefore any facts presented that contradict you are null in void.
That's just pure BS on your part, kid. I point out why in another response where you use the same absurd tactic.
In short, at this point ya got nothing but insipid stubbornness rather than just concede one point. Carry on.