Andrew Marr of the BBC grilled Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein about why Israel is not extending its vaccination program to the Palestinian people in territories it occupies, and Edelstein said Israel has no more obligation to them than the Palestinian minister of health has to “take care of dolphins in the Mediterranean.” Yes, you heard that right.
Israel’s leading governing party, Likud, is secular, but its leaders parrot biblical statements about the Jewish people’s supposed right to lands in Palestine as history, such as that Abraham bought land in Hebron. These religious nationalist claims underlie the government’s desire for annexation, though the U.S. press never talks about this zealotry.