In America, citizens who question the wisdom of coronavrius lockdowns or vaccines more often than not complain on social media. In Israel, they’ve formed a political party: Rapeh, whose latest poster declares, “No More Lockdowns, No Forced Vaccinations, No Green Passport, Yes to Freedom of Choice!”
Ilana Rachel Daniel, the party’s English spokesperson, told The Jewish Press that Israel’s lockdowns and “experimental vaccination program” are “unacceptable in a democratic society – it’s that simple. [It’s a] destruction of the values that we have built our entire society on.”
Also a candidate on the party’s Knesset list – she’s number 11 – Daniel said Rapeh is neither “left nor right.” It’s “the human rights party,” she said.
Daniel calls Israel’s green passport program – by which only vaccinated or former coronavirus patients can enter malls, theaters, and many other public places – “medical apartheid” and questions whether Covid-19 vaccines won’t have long-term deleterious effects.
She stresses, though, that her party doesn’t oppose Covid-19 vaccines per se. Rather, it insists that people be allowed to choose what to inject into their own body.
Experts generally support coronavirus vaccination programs, but Daniel said not all scientists do and “the idea of science being settled is a fallacy of what science actually stands for.”
“Science is not a religion,” she said. “It’s a methodology. It’s a process. It’s about learning and being ready to uproot your opinion according to the [available] data from one day to the next.”
Israel’s Ministry of Healthy evidently opposes the party as it revoked the medical license of Rapeh’s head, Dr. Arieh Avni, on the very same day that the Facebook pages of both Avni and Rapeh were shut down. The two pages combined had 60,000 followers, said Daniel.
Asked whether Rapeh has a chance of making it into the Knesset in Israel’s elections on March 23, Daniel said yes. “The mainstream media refuses to acknowledge our existence – they won’t put us in the polls – but people have heard about us a lot,” she said. “We have gained incredible, miraculous traction despite the ridiculous censorship, so it’s possible.”