The founder of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement said on Sunday that if Israel creates a vaccine of the coronavirus, which originated in China, that BDS supporters can take it.
BDS founder Omar Barghouti made the remarks during a Facebook video titled: “BDS and Anti-normalization: The most important strategies to fight against the deal of the century, even in the time of COVID-19.”
“If you use medical equipment from Israel – it’s not a problem. Cooperating with Israel against the virus – to begin with, we didn’t consider it normalization,” Barghouti said, according to The Jerusalem Post. “The BDS announced normalization criteria long ago. If Israel finds a cure for cancer, for example, or any other virus, then there is no problem in cooperating with Israel to save millions of lives.”
“Up until now, we have not been in a situation where we need Israel urgently and no one else can save us but Israel,” Barghouti continued. “If that will happen, saving lives is more important than anything else.”
In late February, scientists in Israel announced that they were weeks away from having developed the first vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
“Congratulations to MIGAL [The Galilee Research Institute] on this exciting breakthrough,” Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis said, according to The Jerusalem Post. “I am confident there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat.”
“Our basic concept was to develop the technology and not specifically a vaccine for this kind or that kind of virus,” said Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader. “The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus.”
“Let’s call it pure luck,” Katz said. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology.”
At the start of the month, The Jerusalem Post reported that the scientists were only days away from “finishing production of the active component of a coronavirus vaccine. Additionally, the researchers say their work could be tested on humans by June 1.”
The coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China, late last year with the first reported case being recorded on November 17.
The New York Post reported:
The fog of war obscures much about the novel coronavirus pandemic. But two facts seem absolutely certain. First, China’s Communist authorities have lied, concealed and misled about the origins of the epidemic and the toll of the virus in China. Second, the World Health Organization has acted as Beijing’s handmaid.
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Independent Chinese journalists have detailed the Wuhan cover-up: They report that a Chinese lab isolated and identified the strange new virus last December — but that the authorities ordered it to stop its work, get rid of its specimens and keep quiet. It took almost another month for the government to acknowledge that a SARS-like contagion, spread by human contact, was exploding in Hubei province.
When the late Dr. Li Wenliang, the heroic whistleblower, tried to warn the public about the coronavirus, he was detained, charged with “spreading false rumors” and accused of “seriously disrupting social order.” All discussion about the virus is now censored.
U.S. intelligence officials told Bloomberg News last week that China has lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country and an analysis from The Washington Post estimated that the official death count from the coronavirus was 16 times higher in Wuhan than the communist government reported.