Ouchy, Fauci and Ron Klain: The Equivocator and the Prevaricator

“Equivocate: use ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself. Prevaricate: verb: to deviate from the truth.” Merriam Webster

I had every intention of nominating Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world renown immunologist, for the coveted Nobel Peace Prize; this would have been a well-deserved honor for his commitment and heroic efforts in the fight against the scourge of COVID-19.

And then, like Biden and 97% of the subservient U.S. CongressWimps, he had to equivocate on whether Israel is morally and legally obligated to allow COVID-19 vaccinations to enter Occupied Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) where 5.5 million Palestinians are living under the world’s most brutal occupation that has gone unabated for the last 73 years.

Was Fauci’s equivocation politically motivated? And, was he condoning and supporting Israeli Medical Apartheid in what is proving to be a perpetual Mengele style genocidal strangulation of Palestinians in their own land?

To both questions I say a resounding YES!

On 2/19/21 Electronic Intifada’s Maureen Clare Murphy had the courage to take Dr. Anthony Fauci to task for practicing “medical Apartheid.” In a column under the title “Fauci Champions Israeli Medical Apartheid,” Murphy reports that the good doctor “punted when asked about Israel’s refusal to provide vaccines to Palestinians living under its military rule. … the immunologist and chief medical adviser to the US president, has given his implicit endorsement of Israeli medical apartheid.”

Further, Murphy points out that in an interview with The Times of Israel, Fauci “lauded Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program as a ‘model for the rest of the world,’ crediting the socialized healthcare system in the country. … Israel has been lionized for its supposedly comprehensive vaccine rollout, with outlets like The New York Times saying it points to a way out of the pandemic.”

What neither The New York Times, WSJ, nor The Times of Israel (and, for that matter, most of the world’s press, and especially the American and European) have refused to report is that Israel has deliberately and blatantly refused to distribute vaccines “to millions of people living under its single system of unequal rule. … If anything, Israel exemplifies the deeply inequitable global allocation of vaccines that will only allow COVID-19 to thrive.”

Murphy hits the nail smack on its head when she states that “The reality of Israel’s discriminatory vaccine rollout is hardly worthy of praise,” and Fauci’s adulations of Israel “are a major propaganda gift to Israel, which seeks to be viewed as a bastion of technical innovation rather than a brutal occupier.”

Here is Murhpy’s rub:

“[When] The Times of Israel asked Fauci whether the country should ‘help vaccinate neighboring Palestinians.’ the publication notes that ‘Fauci responded carefully’ to the question. ‘You’re asking me a political question, and I don’t want to go there. That only gets me into trouble,’ he replied.

The very framing of the question as to whether Israel should “help” its “neighbors” is fundamentally flawed, whitewashing the reality that five million Palestinians live under its military rule.

Providing vaccinations is not simply a matter of Israel acting benevolently to a neighbor. It’s a matter of Israel fulfilling its obligations under international law.

As the occupying power, Israel is responsible for the public health of the people living in the territory it occupies.

Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention makes “particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Providing vaccinations to Palestinians is not a matter of politics or plain morality but of rights and responsibilities. Israel has utterly failed to uphold its obligations at the expense of Palestinian public health.”

The Times of Israel’s interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci was held “on the occasion of his winning the $1 million Dan David Prize awarded by a foundation based at Tel Aviv University.”

Was Fauci’s cowardly equivocation a result of the 1 million pieces of silver awarded to him – perchance to buy his silence? Or, was Fauci aware that AIPAC would smear him with the spurious anti-Semitism charge to exact a heavy price for his criticizing this Israeli Medical Apartheid? And his silence flies in the face of his assertion that “solidarity between countries is critical to ending the pandemic.” Solidarity for the whole world – except for Palestinians.

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There is no doubt that Israel’s health system is amongst the premier universal health care systems in the world. And, while CongressWimps and Media alike have been braying about Israel’s success in leading the world in vaccinating its population (sans Gazans and West Bankers), including over 600,000 West Bank illegal Israeli settlers, not a single word has been said about the following: Israel’s success in providing its citizens health care is due to its socialized medical care. Anathema to American politicians (Bernie Sanders is an exception) and the public, socialized medicine has been Israel’s saving grace. And the American taxpayer has been funding Israeli health care through generous, guaranteed, and forever, annual, generous billions – with no questions asked – by either party.

While the U.S. is ironically helping fund Israel’s excellent universal health care system, no such successful health care is guaranteed here at home to a citizenry that is being impoverished by outrageously exorbitant medical fees.

Furthermore, in late spring of 2020, at a time when there was a dangerously serious shortage of masks for the hundreds of thousands of health care workers manning the frazzled health care systems in every quarter of the U.S., Donald Trump sent 1 million masks to Israel – his compliments (to procure votes) and the compliments of U.S. citizens – without their approval or consent. And when the 2020 COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Relief Bill was passed in March of 2020, Democrat and Republican CongressWimps wrote into the bill a 500 million dollar Covid-aid taxpayer-funded-outright gift to Israel.

With taxpayer dollars in its lock box, the Israeli government worked out a deal with Pfizer to promptly deliver a gargantuan number of vaccines to Tel Aviv. Is this perhaps why Pfizer was slow in providing vaccines to an anxious Fauci and American public?

And here is another rub: While Israel is endangering the lives of 5.5 million Palestinians, it was recently exposed for its bartering and shipping its over-supply of vaccines to Guatemala as a reward for Guatemala’s moving its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, The Czech Republic has said it plans to open a diplomatic office in Jerusalem. Add Honduras to the recipients of this Vaccine shake-down, bazaar-like policy.

On 2/23/21 Mondoweiss reported the following:

“Israeli media reported that the government was offering vaccine shipments to countries in exchange for their diplomatic support, or as a gift of sorts to countries who had already taken diplomatic measures favorable to Israel, such as vowing to move or establish their embassies to Jerusalem.

While Israel sends its vaccines abroad, and coordinates the purchase of vaccines to Syria, the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are still being left out of the state’s inoculation plans.

The Times of Israel quoted sources “familiar with the development” as saying that “providing the vaccines is part of the process of bringing the missions to the capital.”

Israeli media also reported that Netanyahu was “considering donating vaccines to a country with which it does not have diplomatic relations in exchange for normalization.”

Netanyahu’s plans to leverage vaccines to promote Israeli diplomacy around the Middle East and the world are likely to continue, as Israel nears its goal of inoculating its entire population and vaccine surpluses in the country continue to grow.

The JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace] Health Advisory Council calls on Israel to assume its responsibility to distribute vaccines to Palestinians in the occupied territory: “As health workers, it would be a violation of our professional ethics to stand by in silence as this form of discrimination occurs.”

Oxfam Director opined that while 5.5 million Palestinians are denied vaccines, Israel’s Vaccine Export Deal is “A Shameful Act.” And Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council decried Israel’s egregious discriminatory policy.

Kudos to both of these organizations and others that have voiced their disgust at Israel’s Medical Apartheid.

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On 2/24/2021 Joy Reid interviewed Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s (aka “I am Joe Biden, and I am a Zionist”) Chief of Staff on her ReidOut show and asked Klain what he thought about Israel’s policy of denying the life-saving vaccines to Palestinians. Addled and taken aback by the question, Ron Klain prevaricated, which is a nice way of saying he more than likely lied. Klain claimed ignorance and said something along the line “I am not familiar with the situation.”

Really, Ron le prévarateur, you are the chief of staff of the most powerful man on the face of this earth, and you hadn’t heard about Fauci’s faux pas of equivocation and Israel’s refusal to provide vaccines to civilians under an occupation your boss (and likely you, Blinken, Sullivan, et. al.) supports, funds, and condones?

If your denial was false, Mr. Klain, then shame on you!

And if your denial is truthful, then who, in your massive labyrinth of employees, dropped the ball – perhaps deliberately?

And shame on Dr. Tedros Adhanom, Director, World Health Organization and António Gutteres, United Nations Secretary General, and all the leaders of the so-called free world for their deafening and cowardly silence.

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In Gaza, the 2.1 million besieged residents of the largest open-air prison of the 21st century have to share 62 (SIXTY-TWO) ventilators and 2,312 hospital beds, with, if they are lucky, 3 hours of electricity per day.

Bernie Sanders and the very few who have expressed their outrage at this blatant policy of Medical Apartheid serve as bookends to the equivocators, prevaricators, Ouchy Faucis, Ron Klains, and Netanyahus of this world.

Bernie Sanders, a most noble American, a man of the highest integrity, one who’s taken the teachings of his Torah and Talmud to mean that he should extend his convictions and voice to the public arena to decry man’s inhumanity to man, stands with you, Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.

To you, Bernie, your outrage at Israel’s continued crimes will go down in history as an exemplum of decency and honor, a decency that is perhaps best expressed in the teachings of the many rich traditions of all the Holy Texts.

To trick the controversial Jewish Prophet, a Sadducee posed the following question: “Who is my neighbor?” Calmly, the Palestinian Jew responded by narrating the perennially rich Parable of The Good Samaritan whose most weighty phrase is: “Go ye and do likewise.”

On 28, February, 2021 the nine members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council penned a letter congratulating Dr. Anthony Fauci for having been awarded the 1 million dollar Dan David Prize. At the same time JVP’s “Go Ye and do likewise” message under the heading “Dr. Fauci, Please use your Israeli prize money to buy vaccines for Palestine,” deserves to be highlighted and showcased as the very best of Jewish faith tradition and lore in the “Go Ye and do likewise” genre, a universal tradition which is at the very core of what it means to be human.

The words of JVP’s Health Advisory Council is a resounding affirmation that goodness, fairness, and decency still exist:

“The ultimate solution to the issue of vaccine inequity for Palestinians is for Israel to uphold its responsibility under International law and provide vaccine to the Palestinians under occupation. However, we would like to suggest that you could send a powerful message and improve public health for many thousands of people if you donated some portion of your one million dollars in prize money and used that to buy vaccines for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Not only would that be a step towards resolving vaccine inequity, but it would be a powerful message about the value and dignity of every human life. It would also be a strong message saying that health care needs to be above politics, and that it is just plain wrong to allow politics to be a divider, where some lives are valued and protected and others ignored.”

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, you impress me as a good Catholic, a man of faith, conviction, decency, integrity, and compassion. Please, “Go [you] and do likewise” so as to leave a legendary example of altruism, compassion, and love in The Book of Life.

Raouf J. Halaby is a Professor Emeritus of English and Art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. halabys7181@outlook.com