Actress Rosanna Arquette alleged in a since-deleted tweet that Israel’s work on a coronavirus vaccine for the past year shows that the Jewish state “put lives at risk for profit.”
The March 17 tweet read, “So Israel has been working on a coronavirus vaccine for a year already? (so they knew it) Vaccines take a long time to know if they are safe and KUSHNER OSCAR is the major investor in the new vaccine that is supposedly coming here. Lives at risk for profit.”
Rosanna Arquette combines Big Pharma and the medieval trope of sorcerous Jews sickening people for pleasure and profit. pic.twitter.com/fo4O9PP305
— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) March 17, 2020
Tablet senior writer Yair Rosenberg tweeted that Arquette’s deleted tweet was “factually untrue. This is a new coronavirus. Israelis and others have been working on vaccines for OTHER prior coronaviruses. Josh Kushner (not Jared) has a healthcare company [Oscar] that made a FREE web site for the public to help people find coronavirus tests.”
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1239927771536789505
Jared Kushner is senior adviser to President Donald Trump, and his son-in-law. His brother Josh is co-founder of health insurance startup Oscar, which released an online tool to locate coronavirus testing centers in some areas.
Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement, “She’s confused? No confusion adding Arquette and her blood libel anti-Semitic rant to the list of global Jew haters blaming Israel for coronavirus.”
Cooper also pointed the Journal to his March 17 op-ed in The Media Line compiling some recent examples of anti-Semitic surrounding coronavirus, saying that the “Arquette tweet didn’t come from thin air the libels are right there across social media.”
Pro-Israel writer Claire Voltaire tweeted, “I see endless outrage at anyone daring to suggest this virus came from China but my daily [Twitter timeline] is filled with conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel not from bots and small accounts, but big voices in the lefty community. Why is this ok?”
I see endless outrage at anyone daring to suggest this virus came from China but my daily TL is filled with conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel not from bots and small accounts, but big voices in the lefty community. Why is this ok? pic.twitter.com/Lt24JKbxCX
— Claire (@Claire_V0ltaire) March 17, 2020
Arquette, who is Jewish, defended herself from accusations that she is anti-Semitic.
“Israel is ahead of us in the vaccine for a year that’s what I said,” she tweeted. “I give to Jewish family services who do so much for ALL people and the Holocaust museum honored my husband because he helps survivors.”
https://twitter.com/RoArquette/status/1240003078679482368
UPDATE: Arquette tweeted later on March 17 that she was sorry for offending “my Jewish family and friends and Israel with my negative careless words what can I say except I’m sorry. We are all in a lot of fear right now and there’s so much toxic, misleading and confusing information. I am sorry.”
https://twitter.com/RoArquette/status/1240136527889530881?s=20
