“I can’t have it both ways, and I’m having a hard time picking which one offers more in terms of attention and emotional valence.”
Hebron, Palestinian Territories, February 8 – A conspiracy-minded local resident finds himself caught between two conflicting accusations of mendacity on the part of Jews, the man confessed today, as he faces the contradiction of arguing both that Israel caused development of various anti-COVID inoculations as a means to inject tracking mechanisms or deadly chemicals into non-Jewish bodies, and that Israel committed a crime by failing to provide the inoculations it purchased early on to Palestinians.
Hussein Kawasmeh, 26, acknowledged Tuesday that he must decide on one accusation and stick with it, lest the glaring logical incoherence and inconsistency undermine his efforts to marshal outrage against the Zionist enemy.
“Either the vaccine is a Zionist plot to poison us all, control us all, or just keep tabs on us at all times,” he began, “or the Jews deprived helpless Palestinians of crucial preventive medical treatment last year when they prioritized their own citizens over us for rolling out the immunization campaign. I can’t have it both ways, and I’m having a hard time picking which one offers more in terms of attention and emotional valence.”
Early 2021 saw Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu negotiate an agreement with Pfizer, Inc. to obtain swift delivery of its new vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, in exchange for a premium price and robust aggregate data on population-level efficacy. Israel immediately faced criticism for reserving its supply of the serum for its own citizens, even though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas specifically rejected offers for such assistance in favor of the Palestinian Authority purchasing its own supply at a later date and from a different source. The accusation nevertheless gained some traction in anti-Israel circles, including those of Kawasmeh, who works at a bicycle-repair shop.
At the same time, however, various groups opposed to vaccines in general, or who insist COVID represents nothing more than a virus of marginal importance that the authorities exploit and hype as a pretext to assert increasing control over individuals’ lives, have decried the treatment as a sinister effort to inject toxins or technology into humans. That set of arguments exerted a separate attraction on Kawasmeh, who has so far refrained from asserting either theory with any real vehemence, knowing that he cannot then contradict himself by parroting conflicting propaganda, no matter how compelling it seems in itself.
“I’ll just have to bite the bullet and decide,” he admitted. “The thing is, odds are the Jews are watching me and they want me to choose wrong, but how am I supposed to know? It’s crippling. And maybe that’s their game after all!”
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