Who are the Jews behind the coronavirus vaccines?
One can’t escape their presence in the forefront of leading companies in the race to find a vaccine that will prevent coronavirus.
The individual does not necessarily represent the pack, but
when the individual achieves fame or notoriety, he or she is immediately
associated for good and for bad by friend and foe with the country or
faith into which he or she was born. This is particularly so in the case
of Jews, who, after all is said and done, represent a minuscule
percentage of the world’s population. Nonetheless, it is amazing how
many accomplished individuals there have been, in any number of fields,
whose biographical details, as published by Wikipedia, include mention
of the fact that he or she was born into a Jewish family. There are far
fewer references to someone being born Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist,
Episcopalian, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Mormon, etc., although
given their political clout, there is increasing mention of
Evangelicals.
Getting back to
singling out Jews, one can’t escape their presence in the forefront of
leading companies in the race to find a vaccine that will prevent coronavirus.
Greek veterinarian and biotechnologist Albert Bourla heads Pfizer, and Moderna’s
chief medical officer, Dr. Tal Zaks, is an Israeli who received his
doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and gives interviews
in Hebrew to the Israeli media.
Both
men have been fairly secretive about their private lives. For Israelis,
it’s enough to know that Zaks, despite the various high positions that
he holds in America, is one of us, but in Greece, especially
Thessaloniki, where Bourla and his wife were born and raised, there are
mixed reactions. On the one hand, Greeks are proud that one of their own
is at the top of the totem pole of a company that will help to save the
world from COVID-19. On the other, there have already been vile
antisemitic accusations against Bourla and Jews in general, accusations
similar to negative comments made by US President Donald Trump about the
Chinese.
Bourla comes from a
Sephardi family of jewelers and real estate developers which fled Spain
and has been living in Greece for more than five centuries. His family
members were among the few survivors of the once thriving Jewish
community of Thessaloniki, which was all but destroyed by the Nazis. He
left Greece when he was 34 to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals and
joined Pfizer in 1993. He represented the company in various divisions
in different countries, working his way to the top. Although he has been
living in America for several years, he continues to maintain a home in
Greece.
In April 2019,
Bourla was named the most “preeminent Greek leader” of the global
pharmaceutical industry by United States Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey
R. Pyatt, at the Prix Galien Greece Awards ceremony. As for the
defamatory antisemitic slurs that have appeared in some Greek media,
these have been publicly condemned by the Central Board of Jewish
Communities of Greece.
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