Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Letters

Letter | Why haven’t the U.N. and Jordan stepped up to vaccinate Palestinians?

To the editors,

I do not criticize you for publishing an op-ed advocating and pushing Israel to step up and help vaccinate the Palestinians on the West Bank. (“Yes, Israel should vaccinate all Palestinians. Here’s why.”)

After all, who else would care to?

The assumption that Israel should vaccinate Palestinians is based solely on the perverse notion they should prioritize Palestinians over their own citizens, including Israeli Christians, Muslims and Druze. The issue is further complicated by the fact 1-2 million West Bank citizens are Jordanian passport holders, yet no one accuses Jordan of not stepping up.

Another question: why isn’t the U.N. responsible for vaccinating those Palestinians designated as refugees? They are dependents of the U.N.

As Israel nears the completion of vaccinating its citizens it has made vaccines available. Israel began vaccinating Palestinian health workers on March 9.

It is time that Mahmoud Abbas steps up, and that he and his buddies start buying vaccines off the market rather than hording relief money and using other money to reward acts of terrorism against Jews. If they ever want to be a country, they need to start acting like they can actually manage a country responsibly. To my mind this may be taken as proof the P.A. may never achieve a level of competency to run a nation.

Respectfully,

Toby Stuart

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.