Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
The NBC sketch-comedy Saturday Night Live provoked controversy when a Feb. 20 segment broached a controversial topic: the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The throwaway joke that provoked outrage went as follows: Weekend Update host Michael Che quipped that “Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half their population, and I’m gonna guess it’s the Jewish half.”
Israel has indeed vaccinated over half of its citizenry. However, Israel has made no such effort to vaccinate Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (collectively the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or OPT), who are denied Israeli citizenship despite living under Israeli domination since Israel captured the territories in June 1967. Thus, while the joke is not literally true, it does reflect reality. The majority Jewish population of Israel recieves vaccinations, while the Palestinian population of the OPT doesn’t. Furthermore, 763,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living illegally in the OPT are being vaccinated, while their Palestinian neighbors aren’t.
This, however, hasn’t prevented SNL from being accused of spreading “an antisemitic lie” by Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein; of engaging in “modern-day blood libel” by former Trump administration official Ellie Cohanim; and of “inappropriately us[ing] Jews as a punchline” by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, among other condemnations. Israel’s supporters argue that criticism directed at Israeli policy is frequently rooted in antisemitism. While this may be true in some cases, the fact remains that Israel styles itself as a Jewish state rather than a liberal state of all its citizens, not to mention Palestinians under its occupation. Thus, pointing out that the Israeli state favors Jews over non-Jews is clearly not antisemitic. A quick overview of Israeli history illuminates this point.
Zionism, the Jewish nationalist ideology to which the founders of Israel subscribed, sought to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. In practice, this necessitated an exclusivist settler-colonial project which sought to forcibly displace the native Palestinians to make room for Jewish settlement. When the opportunity to make this dream a reality presented itself, the Zionist leadership wasted no time seizing it. From Nov. 29, 1947, when the United Nations partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two states—one ‘Jewish,’ the other ‘Arab’—to May 15, 1948, when a coalition of Arab states invaded Israel, which had declared independence the previous day, over 300,000 Palestinians were systematically ethnically cleansed from the country. By March 10, 1949, when the fighting was over, Israel had seized 78% of Mandatory Palestine and expelled over 750,000 Palestinians. The Palestinian minority remaining within Israel’s borders, while nominally granted citizenship, was subjected to military rule until 1966.
In June 1967, the remaining 22% of historic Palestine, the OPT, was seized by Israel. Since these territories contained several million Palestinians, many of them refugees from the 1947-9 ethnic cleansing, Israel was faced with a conundrum. Though Israel’s leadership had no intention of withdrawing from the OPT, they could not annex the territories and incorporate their inhabitants without threatening Israel’s Jewish majority, nor could they expel millions of Palestinians without international condemnation (although more limited expulsions of some 320,000 Palestinians were carried out).
The solution, according to Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé, was the establishment of an apartheid regime over the entirety of historic Palestine. On June 19, 1967, “Israel’s political leaders decided [unanimously]… to exclude the [OPT] from future negotiations.” From this point on, the OPT’s fate was sealed: Israel proceeded with de facto annexation, illegally settling Israeli Jews in the OPT while depriving the native Palestinians of their human, civil, and national rights. The Israeli leadership, aware that these actions were illegal under international law, knew they couldn’t be announced publicly. Thus, the formula of ‘land-for-peace’ and a ‘peace process’ was constructed. Junior Minister Yosef Burg laid out this strategy bluntly in a June 1967 cabinet meeting: “We are going to have to hold on to the territories for a very long time, while claiming we wish to make peace.”
Knowledge of history therefore renders the antisemitism accusation leveled at SNL farcical. Israel’s vaccination efforts indisputably favor its Jewish population over its Palestinian population, due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians living under Israeli control are denied even second-class citizenship in the state that has controlled every aspect of their lives for over half a century.
Israel’s defenders have pointed out that vaccine access is not limited to Israeli Jews; Israel’s Palestinian citizens are also eligible to recieve vaccines. This is true, but SNL’s joke did not refer to Israel’s citizenry, but to Israel’s population. Only a small minority of the Palestinian population under Israeli control are citizens of Israel. The vast majority live in the OPT under military occupation.
Under Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the Occupying Power [must] ensur[e]… public health… with particular reference… to combat[ing] the spread of… epidemics.” Thus, by refusing to vaccinate Palestinians in the OPT, Israel fails in its basic duty as an occupying power. Israeli officials deny Israel’s legal obligation to vaccinate Palestinians, citing the 1993-5 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which Health Minister Yuli Edelstein claims “says… that the Palestinians have to take care of their own health.” There are several glaring issues with this claim.
Firstly, the Oslo Accords weren’t intended to be permanent; they were meant to provide autonomy leading to the creation of a Palestinian state in the OPT by 1999. Secondly, Israel has consistently violated the Accords’ terms by, for example, prohibiting Palestinians from moving freely within the OPT. Thirdly, Article 17(6), Annex III, Oslo II clearly states that “Israel and the Palestinian side… shall cooperate in combating [epidemics], not that Israel is absolved of all responsibility for Palestinian health. Finally, even if Oslo were permanent, even if Israel hadn’t violated the agreement consistently, and even if the documents said what Edelstein claims, the Geneva Conventions legally override the Oslo Accords. Human rights cannot be signed away by agreement, just as an employee cannot ‘agree’ to receive under minimum wage. The UN reiterated this on Jan. 17, 2021, stating that “[t]he ultimate responsibility for health services remains with the occupying power…”.
More important than Israel’s violation of international law, however, is the suffering that violation causes for millions of Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority, the administrative entity established by Oslo which exerts nominal self-rule in 39% of the West Bank, has rolled out a vaccination program intended to achieve 60% coverage with vaccines from abroad. Lack of funding, however, has prevented acquisition of nearly enough doses for a population of 2.7 million. Israel has agreed to vaccinate Palestinians with permits to work in Israel or the settlements; however, this group numbers only about 110,000.
In densely-populated Gaza, governed by the Islamic Resistance Movement (commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas), the situation is worse. Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2005, but continues to occupy the territory through control of its airspace, maritime space, and border crossings, and through a near-total blockade of goods and people in or out. Gaza has received 22,000 doses of vaccinations for a population of 1.8 million. Given the blockade prevents Hamas obtaining vaccines without Israel’s permission, Hamas alone will likely be unable to procure enough doses for even a fraction of Gaza’s population.
Israel’s refusal to vaccinate the OPT will cause thousands of deaths. Given that COVID-19, unlike the Israeli government, doesn’t discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians, some deaths will be Israeli Jews unable/unwilling to receive the vaccine. The fact that a throwaway joke on SNL about Israel’s policy of medical apartheid has provoked greater outrage than the policy itself exposes the slanted nature of US discourse on the region. While officials and pundits shadowbox over the moral implications of late-night TV, Palestinians continue to suffer under Israel’s medical apartheid.
