Actress Rosanna Arquette alleged in a now-deleted tweet that Israel “has been working on a [coronavirus] vaccine for a year already” and has put “lives at risk for profit.”
“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,” she tweeted on Tuesday.
Tablet senior writer Yair Rosenberg tweeted that Arquette’s deleted post 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.”
Josh Kushner’s brother, Jared, is U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.
In a statement, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper said, “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.”
Later on Tuesday, Arquette, who is Jewish, denied that she’s 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.”
On Wednesday, Arquette apologized.
“I’m sorry Ive offended 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,” she tweeted.
