BDS Founder Changes Tune Now That Israel Working On Coronavirus Vaccine
By
Ryan SaavedraDailyWire.com
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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.”