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MARCH 4, 2021 | The Jewish Home
ers. Rather, the coveted shots went to government officials, the Jordanian royal court, and the Palestinian national soccer team. The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry had previously said that the handful of doses available would be given first to healthcare workers and then to the elderly and other atrisk groups. As such, the announcement of where the vaccinations went produced ire amongst Palestinians.
Among those given vaccines were security officials working in the offices of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, 100 Palestinian students heading abroad to study, fieldworkers in the Central Elections Committee, PA government ministers, Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee members over the age of 65, and some foreign embassy staff in Ramallah.
The Palestinian national soccer team was also immunized. The Health Ministry explained that the team had been asked to play a match abroad representing Palestine and that a coronavirus immunization was a condition for their participation. As of Tuesday, only 12,000 vaccines had reached Ramallah. Approximately 2,000 Moderna vaccines were sent by Israel to vaccinate medical staff, and another 10,000 were Russian Sputnik V vaccines sent as a donation by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Palestinian Authority sent around 2,000 Sputnik vaccines to Gaza. The PA acknowledged that it also transferred 200 doses of the vaccine to Jordan. The Health Ministry claimed that 90% of the vaccines it had distributed in the West Bank — around 9,800 vaccines — had gone to frontline health care workers. The virus continues to surge in Palestinian territories. Palestinian Authority areas saw 1,819 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, with 28 patients on ventilators. “Israel, the occupation state, has far more respect for and fear of its own people than you,” one furious commentator wrote on the Health
Ministry’s Facebook page. “It even cares more for Arab workers… all you’ve done is inflict corruption and nepotism on us, while the rest of the people die from coronavirus or enter quarantine and die from hunger.”
Geirus Ruling
In an unfortunate turn of events, Israel’s high Court of Justice ruled on Monday that non-Orthodox conversions in Israel would be considered legitimate for the purpose of Israeli citizenship. The Reform and Conservative movements celebrated the ruling. Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs said the ruling “was years in the making and reflects the diversity and vibrancy of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.” “The Court has affirmed the reality that the Jewish people are stronger because of the contributions of Reform and Conservative Movements and their commitment to bringing more Jews into the Jewish People,” he continued. “We hope this ruling establishes a precedent that will lead to further recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel.” The Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly called the ruling a “rebuke” of “recent Knesset efforts to restrict religious freedom in Israel.” “This was a very long time coming. Not swift justice, but sweet and righteous just the same,” it said. Monday’s High Court ruling determined that people who convert to Judaism in Israel through the Reform and Conservative movements must be recognized as Jews for the purpose of the Law of Return and are thus entitled to Israeli citizenship. The bombshell decision, which shatters the longstanding Orthodox ruling on officially recognized conversions in Israel, was the culmination of an appeal process that began more than 15 years ago, involving 12 people in the country who converted to Judaism through non-Orthodox
denominations. The justices specified that they had previously withheld issuing a ruling to allow the state to handle the matter, but the state had failed to do so. The ruling only applies to conversions in Israel. Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef blasted the ruling. “What the Reform and Conservatives call ‘conversion’ is nothing but a forgery of Judaism,” he said in a statement, calling on lawmakers to work for a “quick” legislative fix. Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau said that those who undergo Reform or Conservative conversions “are not Jews.” “No High Court decision will change this fact,” he said. According to Agudath Israel of America, the ruling is a “body blow to true Jewish unity” and is “both misleading and dangerous.” “Misleading, because conversion is not a secular change of status; it is, inherently, a religious one. And dangerous, because bestowing legal status of any sort to ‘conversions’ that lack the essential elements that have defined geirus for millennia can only confuse the Jewish public and increase disunity.”
White House Declassifies Khashoggi Report
The State Department declassified an intelligence report that accused Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) of ordering the 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi journalist had been abducted and killed in Riyadh’s Istanbul consulate in 2018 by operatives reporting to the crown prince. Ever since the saga exploded in an international scandal, MBS has denied knowing about the assassination and
