Israel's Education Minister Opposes 'Crime' of COVID Vaccinations in Schools

Haaretz ^ | 7.31.21

[Tipllub]

Israel's education minister said she opposes vaccinating children against the coronavirus inside schools, arguing that it will cause “social pressure” on students already suffering from emotional distress caused by the pandemic.

In an attempt to explain her opposition to providing vaccines in the schools, Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton told Channel 12 News on Wednesday that “We are talking about children who for a year and a half sat at home, and are in emotional distress. It’s a crime as far as I’m concerned.”

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On Thursday, Shasha-Biton tweeted that “the role of the education system is to educate. The role of the health system is to deal with health. An educational statement, saying it isn’t right to bring in unnecessary social pressure in schools, is taken out of context, to present my position in a distorted manner.”

An Education Ministry official said on Thursday that “vaccinations against the coronavirus are not similar to the regular vaccinations given in schools. There’s nothing that can be done about it, they are not part of the consensus.”

“It's impossible to ignore a lot of parents who are afraid of the coronavirus vaccine and don’t want to vaccinate their children,” said the official. “We don’t need to ‘import’ this disagreement into the schools, in such a way that the children who will not be vaccinated could very well be ‘marked’ and suffer socially. For example, they will want not to sit next to them (unvaccinated children). And all this happens while it's up to the parents to decide whether to vaccinate their children. We don’t need to bring a controversial discussion into schools.”