“The Palestinian health ministry has approved the main Russian vaccine against Covid-19, known as Sputnik V, for domestic use, making it "the first country in the Middle East" to do so, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said on Monday.

In a statement, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) confirmed that the Palestinians had registered for the vaccine “under the emergency use authorisation procedure without additional clinical trials in the country”, following the footsteps of local regulators in Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia and Serbia.”

“At its 2020 National Conference, solidarity with Palestine was proposed as part of NUS' Ethnocultural platform. The platform, moved by 2020 Ethnocultural Officer Vinil Kumar and UNSW Education Officer Shovan Bhattarai, was adopted unanimously by delegates at the conference.”

“When did you first become interested in the issue of Palestine?
Being raised as a Christian I held the view that the Israelites were “God’s chosen people” and therefore everything they did was blessed. It was not till I was in my mid-30s that I was brought up short. By that time I had rejected Christianity and belief in a god, and was running as a candidate for the Australian Democrats. A potential voter asked me about the party’s position on Palestine, and I undertook to find out and get back to them. That was when I found out the party policy was strongly pro-Palestinian causing me to research why, ultimately resulting in a 180 degree turn in my personal position.”

“When did you first become interested in the issue of Palestine?

My father spoke to me about the Palestinians. He told me that they had been given a raw deal in 1948. I would have been somewhere between the ages of 5 and 12. The family bought a television in 1968 to help with my education and I became fascinated with the news. During the Yom Kippur War, I was grounded for some minor misdemeanour and occupied myself by keeping a map of the Arab progress in the war.”

“We, the undersigned Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals are hereby stating our views regarding the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and the way this definition has been applied, interpreted and deployed in several countries of Europe and North America.”