Dear Our World in Data/University of Oxford,
As you know, with the ongoing devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the hope for a better future in sight, it is more crucial than ever for scientists and policy makers to accurately track and follow vaccination coverage. This is why I am extremely concerned that Our World in Data, which is hosted and scientifically edited by the University of Oxford, is using their website to depict Israel with politicized and misleading figures. Our World In Data/Oxford are omitting the fact that, as an occupying power, Israel has failed to fulfill its obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to provide vaccines to all 4.5 million Palestinians living under its military occupation in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT).
Why is Oxford/Our World in Data refusing to acknowledge this fact and insisting on misreporting Israel’s vaccination figures,thus perpetuating Israel’s medical apartheid and impunity before international law?
Even though in your mission statement, you commit to focusing on “poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality”, in order to contribute to solving the world’s largest problems by using existing data and making it widely available, you are still inaccurately reporting Israel’s discriminatory and racist vaccination programme. I am aware that 19 international rights groups, including over a dozen Palestinian human righs organizations, progressive Jewish groups, B'Tselem, and Amnesty International, have written an open letter to you calling your attention to your error, and still you have declined to correct it.
Israel, as the Occupying Power, is the only sovereign state that currently exists in historic Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, as confirmed by a recent Human Rights Watch report denouncing Israel’s apartheid regime. Israel is therefore recognized by the United Nations and all major human rights organizations around the world as responsible and obliged under the Fourth Geneva Convention to vaccinate the entire population under its military occupation control. This includes the millions of Palestinians in the OPT, i.e., the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Saying that Israel has vaccinated X% of "its population" without counting the population under its military control is therefore legally incorrect and morally problematic.
Israel has included in its official figures the Jewish-Israeli settlers living illegally in the OPT whom it vaccinates. This means that Oxford/OWiD, by uncritically reproducing these Israeli figures, fails to present accurate vaccination data for the population in Israel and the OPT, legitimizing instead Israel’s criminal policy of population transfer and discrimination based on race-ethnicity.
I urge you to accurately include all Israelis and Palestinians living under Israeli control as a denominator when calculating Israel’s percentage of vaccination coverage. Adding these millions of vaccine-deprived Palestinians to Israel’s figures would make the picture far more accurate and morally tenable.
As United Nations experts have emphasized, “The denial of an equal access to health care, such as on the basis of ethnicity or race, is discriminatory and unlawful.” Oxford/OWiD should not reproduce and legitimize such discrimination.
Sincerely,