April 8, 2021
Dear Dr. Fauci,
In a letter to you on March 1, 2021, the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council urged you to send a powerful message and improve public health for many thousands of people by donating some portion of your one million dollars in money from the Israeli Dan David Prize to buy vaccines for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
We were recently made aware that you will not officially accept the prize until May 6 and we received feedback that accepting the award violates the call to boycott Israeli institutions that receive governmental funding. The prize is also headquartered at Tel Aviv University which was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Munis. In retrospect, we should have asked you to turn down the prize altogether. We are now joining those that are calling for you to boycott the award entirely.
That would be an even more powerful course of action.
The fact is that the award is being offered by the Israeli government which is guilty of maintaining decades of occupation and a widespread disregard for international law and Palestinian human rights. Accepting the Dan David Prize which you received for “Speaking Truth to Power” will obscure the ongoing health crisis in the occupied territories that is caused by Israeli policies of de-development, restrictions of movement of people, medications, etc., and militarization of the entire region. Accepting the prize contributes to legitimizing Israel’s violence and racism and also legitimizes the institutions that are central to Israel’s apartheid policies.
We doubt you would have been an apologist for South African apartheid. We urge you to decline the prize and to respect the call for a cultural boycott of Israeli institutions. This call was issued by Palestinians who are most affected by Israeli policy and the denial of access to medical care that is central to the catastrophic disparities between Israeli citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories when it comes to COVID 19.
This appeal was written by Dr. Alice Rothchild on behalf of the JVP Health Advisory Council.
Dr. Fauci
I respectfully urge you to heed the sage advice offered by Dr. Alice Rothchild on behalf of the JVP Health Advisory Council.and donate all or at least a large portion of the million dollars you have been awarded by winning the Dan David Prize to the long suffering, brutally/illegally occupied and dispossessed indigenous Palestinians. They desperately need financial assistance to overcome COVOID 19.. Remember the old adage, “lie down with dogs and you;ll get up with fleas” Do the right thing!!
The Israel Prize (not the same as the Dan David Prize, but in the same family of high honors) – a bit more on that. Oded Goldreich, a world-renowned scientist, has been up for the Israel Prize but there’s been a kerfluffle because of his (rather mild, in my opinion) criticism of the settlements and such. But apparently this is becoming a real issue about Mcarthyism in Israel. Here’s a Haaretz editorial – I can’t open the full story because I don’t have a subscription, so if anyone has access…
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/an-israel-prize-for-the-occupation-1.9695513?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=daily-brief&utm_content=15c2c124ae
An Israel Prize for the Occupation…The High Court of Justice provided valuable ammunition Thursday to the forces that persecute and silence all criticism of the Israeli occupation in the territories. In granting Education Minister Yoav Gallant’s request to reexamine the political statements of Prof. Oded Goldreich with an eye to denying him the Israel Prize in mathematics and computer science, the justices facilitated a separate track for leftists: Even if the Weizmann Institute scientist ultimately does receive the prize, it will not be as part of the familiar ceremony, but later, at an unknown place and time, with no connection to the event held on Independence Day….
Dr. Fauci, if you accept this prize, you will damage your own reputation. Unless you use the opportunity to support – with money and words – vaccines for occupied Palestinians. As for Israel’s reputation, Israel itself is doing a fine job of destroying it.
This is exactly like asking the Government’s War Secretary from Raytheon to give back his money to the bombed and slaughtered children of Palestine, Syria and Yemen.
Dr Fauci has been a notorious shill for the drug industry since the early 80s during the first AIDS alarm, lying and manipulating on behalf of the major drug corporations, especially during the current epidemic.
There is absolutely no decent reason for Dr. Fauci to even contemplate accepting this bloody “prize”. Not morally, not scientifically, not for any reason whatsoever. NO Israel prizes should be accepted by any true human during this time or any other time in their gruesome history of Genocide, Occupation, and Apartheid.
Don’t know if anyone had a chance to read this from yesterday:
“The US media is touting Israel’s Covid recovery. But occupied Palestinians are left out
Instead of vaccinating Palestinians, Benjamin Netanyahu tried to send thousands of doses around the world as rewards to countries that moved their embassies to Jerusalem …
… At some point, potentially in the near future, the current pandemic will end. The global attention on vaccines will dissipate. The disparities between Israelis and Palestinians, however, will persist. As with the vaccine shortages, these disparities are largely artificial and induced by political decisions. Global attention must remain on the core issues causing Palestinians to be less healthy than their Israeli counterparts. Asking Palestinians, nearly half of whom are children, to pay for political stagnation with shortened and less healthy lives has been tolerated for too long and should remain unacceptable when the pandemic is over.
The United States – which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, consistently deflects any criticism of Israel on the world stage, and has turned a blind eye to Israeli actions that violate the United States’ own stated positions, such as on settlement construction – has a unique role to play in this effort. But so far, aside from one phone conversation in February where Secretary of State Blinken asked for more Israeli support in Palestinian vaccination, the Biden administration has not made any substantial requests for Israel to fulfill their legal obligations. If the US truly wants to celebrate Israel’s success, it should insist on a higher bar for success: namely, vaccine equity and access for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
Much more here @- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/09/the-us-media-is-touting-israels-covid-recovery-but-occupied-palestinians-are-left-out