HeadlineFeb 03, 2021
Coronavirus vaccinations have started in the occupied West Bank after Israel transferred the first batch of a total of 5,000 doses to inoculate frontline Palestinian health workers, after coming under fire for refusing to share its vaccines with Palestinians. This is a West Bank resident commenting on the arrival of vaccines.
Aisha Salem: “The vaccine is good, but they are only giving it to the healthcare workers, not to the public.”
The Occupied Territories are also expecting to receive 37,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine through the World Health Organization’s COVAX scheme in mid-February.
In the U.S., freshman New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman called on Israel to vaccinate all Palestinians. He wrote, “As a Black man living in America, I know the feeling of being neglected by my government, and society, of feeling like a second-class citizen or not a citizen at all.”
News Release | 1 February 2021
MANILA, PHILIPPINES (1 February 2021) The Asian Development Bank (ADB) today announced that it has helped the Georgian government develop its National Plan for COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
“ADB’s assistance enabled the Ministry to quickly mobilize experts and develop a comprehensive plan which will guide us towards our target to achieve coverage of 1.7 million Georgian citizens by the end of 2021,” Georgia Minister of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs Ekaterine Tikaradze
The plan, approved by Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia on 21 January, will enable the successful deployment, implementation, and monitoring of COVID-19 vaccines once they become available. The plan covers legal, regulatory, and institutional aspects of vaccine deployment; cold-chain and logistical requirements; and the principles underpinning
Ilham Tohti & Nathan Law Kwun-chung
COVAX
2020 was a year marked by the devastation of the still raging COVID-19 pandemic, but also by the extraordinary scientific achievement of record fast vaccine development and the prospect of the first pandemic in human history to be ended through vaccination. The risks associated with COVID-19 are unevenly distributed – by age, geographical location, socioeconomic status, and other demographic factors. Some of this unevenness is due to the biology of the virus, but some of it is a consequence of social and political inequalities. With various vaccines now approved and mass vaccination programs underway in a number of countries, these global inequalities and injustices are finding new expression in the unequal distribution of vaccines. This is not helped by the rise of “vaccine nationalism.” A Nobel Peace Prize for work to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines would send an important signal that international cooperation
Israel as Apartheid Country…According to B tselm tikkun.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tikkun.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
B’Tselem, apartheid, and correcting the ethical grammar on Israel/Palestine
January 25, 2021
Robert A. H. Cohen
B’Tselem’s new report describing all of Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories as a single ‘apartheid’ regime will have widespread and long-term implications. Not only does it change the acceptable vocabulary on Israel/Palestine, it also alters the ethical grammar which has created and sustained an injustice now in its eighth decade. How we speak and what we can say will shape the future politics of this conflict and change the ethical framework through which solutions are found and implemented. In short, language matters.