In 2016, the ex-head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority charged that "global Judaism is a virus, a plague" that led to the financial crisis in 2008.  Four years later, the Palestinian Authority's Health Ministry has been, according to Caroline Glick, "cooperating in an unprecedented manner with its Israeli counterpart.  The Palestinians followed Israel's lead on virtually all aspects of the Coronavirus fight.  Palestinian medical teams received training in Israeli hospitals.  Israel provided the PA with testing kits, protective gear, respirators and other vital equipment for fighting the pandemic."  Even the Hamas regime in Gaza viewed Israel as the authority for dealing with the virus.  

In her eye-opening column, Glick notes that while benefiting from Israel's health system, Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohamad Shtayyeh, long considered a "moderate," has used the opportunity to allege that Israel is using soldiers and Arab workers in Israel to spread the virus among Palestinians.  Also, "Palestinian security forces that Israel has permitted to enforce the closure of non-essential businesses are concentrating their efforts on preventing "peaceful ties between Palestinians and Israelis."

The Palestinian leadership has also asked the Israelis for handouts, not hiding that the funds would be used for the families of imprisoned Israeli terrorists, even as it tries to block Palestinians from working for Israelis.  And while Israel is offering free assistance to Hamas in fighting the virus, that terrorist organization brags that it will not release "information" on Israeli hostages and bodies of fallen soldiers until Israel releases 250 terrorists from prison.

And speaking about the coronavirus, David Rutz reported that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which would boycott any and all Israeli products, has proclaimed an exception — namely, any COVID-19 vaccine, which the BDS organization apparently is confident will be developed by Israel in a timely, efficient, and competent manner. 

The leader of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, said it is "not a problem" for movement-supporters to use medical equipment from Israel because this would not be considered "normalization."  It seems that there's a Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel that opposes any kind of "normalization" — namely, "participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people."  But Barghouti regards co-opting Israeli health care know-how as acceptable.  This does, after all, continue a long tradition of Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials and their family members receiving treatment from Israeli physicians. 

These declarations surrounding the Coronavirus confirm the best argument for financial support of Israel, by nations like the United States, as well as by individual contributors and investors: Israeli ingenuity and talent return a thousandfold whatever funds are appropriated to that country.  To boycott would mean losing access to all Israeli strides against medical viruses and computer viruses, and boycotting all computers, mobile phones, voicemail, video-on-demand, electric cars, and even cherry tomatoes.  And the actions of the Palestinian leaders, as reported above, bring home to us the reckless and ungrateful way that they will use funds if allowed to do so.

But the cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians during the coronavirus indicates that there is a greater and more urgent incentive than "normalization" for fighting disease and for ending violence.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab (cropped).