The opposition of a few cabinet ministers to using the Shin Bet security agency to track confirmed carriers of the new COVID variant exposed something that has been gaining traction among a few leading political players – the fight for the votes of anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. It turns out that there are those who see these groups as a potential electorate that can be scooped up at the moment of truth.
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Anti-vaxxers are clearly out of the bounds of the consensus, and many people may see them as outside the bounds of legitimacy. At least in Israel, they have no media outlet that allows their voices to be heard, they are not welcome in studios, and for the most part, media coverage of them is limited to the violent, radical fringe.
This week, a few dozen anti-vaxxers demonstrated outside the Knesset and blocked the entrance to the building for a few hours. The signs they were holding and what they were calling out were on the radical side – they were talking about an end to the state, sometimes an end to humanity. Anyone who cooperates with the vaccine campaign they view as evil.
What the people who are eyeing this group have in common is that they are politicians whose futures are unclear, ones who are looking to build themselves up using a new base that could make their opposition to vaccines a central issue in the next election. The newest player to join the game is Gideon Sa'ar. The justice minister is a buttoned-up, drab politician, far from the extremist style of the anti-vaxxer group, which doesn't balk at using harsh words. But above everything else, he is a politician without voters, who according to every current poll wouldn't make it past the minimum electoral threshold.
The political system sees Sa'ar's vote against Shin Bet surveillance for COVID patients this week as a clear gesture to a sector that could help him make the comeback he longs for. It looks like Sa'ar can't allow himself to say he opposes vaccines or make denials about COVID. But he can allow himself to become the dominant opponent of coercive moves, tracking, and oversight.
Sa'ar joins the No. 2 person on his party's list, who has long since thought and acted as he does now – Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton. Anti-vaxxers see her as the only one in the Knesset who speaks for them, going back to when she was chair of the Coronavirus Committee. Sa'ar throwing his hat in with her indicates a clear direction.
Not only is New Hope looking for a new electoral base, but so is Eli Avidar, who will obviously not be on Yisrael Beytenu's list for the next Knesset. Avidar is trying to reinvent himself as a party leader, and COVID deniers could be prime pickings when he tries to win seats. He can allow himself to do what Sa'ar cannot – he is wilder, cruder, and he is more able to wink at this eccentric group.
And not only these three. The Likud is the biggest party in the Knesset, but is still a mandate or two short of regaining power by giving the Right-Haredi bloc the requisite 61 mandates. Moshe Feiglin, who returned to the Likud after adventuring out to form the Zehut party, which did not make it past the minimum threshold, is convinced that the missing mandate is there, in the anti-vaxxers and opponents of surveillance. Feiglin shouldn't just wink at them, like Sa'ar and Avidar, but actually spell things out. He is a stringent opponent of any action that would restrict the unvaccinated population – he is against the Green Pass system and any other move to pressure the masses into getting vaccinated. This is why he leapt up this week, like he'd been bitten by a snake, when Yuval Steinitz gave an interview to a few media outlets and said he supported the idea of making vaccines mandatory.
Feiglin is convinced that Steinitz is fully coordinated with the government, which might even pass this law soon, given that not enough of the population has responded to the government's call to get vaccinated. Thus far Feiglin has taken care to play down his opinions on the issue. In the past few months, although he has been a regular participant in every weekly Likud faction meeting, he hasn't brought the matter up. He knows that his opinion is not in line with party leader Benjamin Netanyahu's, and he doesn't want to clash with him over it. Until this week.
After Steinitz spoke, Feiglin wrote a long, sharply-worded letter to the party and warned against it cooperating with a bill to mandate vaccination, if any were proposed. Feiglin wrote to Netanyahu that the path to 61 mandates went through the new electoral sector that never voted Likud before, and noted the huge electoral potential of that group. Feiglin knows that opponents like Sa'ar, Shasha-Biton, and Avidar have popped up, but he thinks that the opinions he has voiced thus far have brought the Likud thousands of new members from the anti-vaxxer circles who will make sure to put him on the party's Knesset list so he will shout in their name, from inside.
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