How Israel’s education minister became a hero to the country’s COVID skeptics

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In less than a month, Israel is supposed to open up a new school year. But with COVID-19 cases rising nationwide, some health officials and experts are calling to delay the return to classrooms by several weeks, fearing that sending children back will increase the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant.

The problem for these health officials is that while most Israeli cabinet ministers have fallen in line when it comes to accepting the COVID restrictions recommended by experts over the past year, Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton has been one of the most prominent political figures to question their wisdom.

The right-wing lawmaker has carved herself an image as a “restrictions skeptic” – and proven to be a headache for two consecutive prime ministers.

Shasha-Biton first made national headlines last summer when she led a Knesset committee devoted to COVID-19 and used that public standing to offer a skeptical attitude toward the maximal anti-COVID measures adopted by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s government.

Now, as education minister in the new government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, she has drawn national attention for staunchly opposing a plan to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to children in schools.

“It’s a crime as far as I’m concerned,” she vehemently declared in a television interview last week, arguing that such a program would put “social pressure” on students whose parents were opposed to vaccinations, at a time when schoolchildren were already suffering emotional distress as a result of the extended pandemic crisis.

The remark came on the heels of an ongoing dispute between Shasha-Biton and the director of public health services, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, whom Shasha-Biton has reportedly called “crazy” and accused of fostering “hysteria.”

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The back-and-forth between the two dominated headlines for days in a row, and forced Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz to take the unusual step of issuing statements of support for Alroy-Preis. Neither of them directly mentioned Shasha-Biton in their statements, but it was clear they were responding to her criticism of the top health official.

The education minister’s polished appearance and matter-of-fact style hardly suggest the conspiracist label her critics are pinning on her following her “crime” remark and her apparent sympathy for families who choose not to vaccinate their children. (She has previously told parents to get their children vaccinated before the school term starts.) But her words were met with a sharp backlash both in the political arena and the media, with one unnamed minister calling her a “coronavirus denier” and accusing her of holding Israeli schoolchildren “captive.”

The Kochav Yair School in central Israel, featuring COVID advice for students.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv

One example of the debate sparked by Shasha-Biton was a fiery exchange between Moshe Bar Siman Tov, a former Health Ministry director general and critic of the current education minister, and veteran television journalist Arad Nir.

Bar Siman Tov tweeted last week that her statements were “disturbing and extremely dangerous.” Nir shot back in defense of Shasha-Biton, saying it would indeed be criminal for students to return to school “and encounter vaccination stations instead of a supportive learning environment,” and suffer “shaming” if they don’t vaccinate.

Bar Siman Tov responded that other vaccinations were delivered in schools and a COVID vaccine was no different, accusing Nir and the education minister of being members of a “cult.”

Then came COVID

More than any other Israeli politician, Shasha-Biton, 48, has seen her political career defined by controversy around the pandemic, despite the fact that she has served in the Knesset since 2015. During her first five years as a lawmaker, she was mostly unknown to the wider public.

Born and raised in the northern border town of Kiryat Shmona, she earned a doctorate in education from the University of Haifa at 29 and pursued a career in education, serving as a university lecturer and vice president of the Ohalo College of Education in the Golan Heights.

Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton attending a cabinet meeting with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in Jerusalem last month. Yonatan Sindel

After serving as Kiryat Shmona’s deputy mayor and member of its city council, her national political career was launched in 2015 after former Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon launched Kulanu, a center-right party focused on issues of social and economic justice.

Vowing to bring new voices into political leadership, Kahlon plucked Shasha-Biton from relative obscurity and listed her in seventh place on his Knesset slate, calling her a “symbol” who embodied the spirit of his new party.

She was, in fact, a member of three underrepresented groups: women, Mizrahim (her parents were born in Morocco and Iraq) and residents of the periphery.

Initially, Shasha-Biton’s legislative work focused on education-related issues, women’s and children’s rights, and strengthening border cities like her hometown. Serving as chair of the Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child, she advocated for sexual abuse victims and the rights of adoptees. Climbing the ladder, she eventually rose to a cabinet position for a short time, serving as construction and housing minister between January 2019 and May 2020.

Following Israel’s April 2019 election, Kulanu, which barely passed the electoral threshold, merged with Likud; Kahlon, the leader’s party and founder, retired from politics. Shasha-Biton found herself as an outsider in Likud and was not offered a cabinet position when Netanyahu formed his short-lived unity government with Benny Gantz in May 2020. It looked like her political career was over.

Then, COVID-19 happened.

Shasha-Biton became chairwoman of the Knesset’s emergency coronavirus committee, which, in retrospect, served her political career much more effectively than any ministry position.

It was from that position that she constantly challenged decisions recommended by the Health Ministry and accepted by Netanyahu, stating that she refused to be a “rubber stamp” for the government’s policy of restrictions and lockdowns.

Her rebelliousness led Likud whip Miki Zohar to reportedly snarl that she was “finished” in the party. At the same time, her stubbornness won her widespread public popularity for her demands that the government back up their decisions with data, declaring that her committee “cannot vote on anything that we cannot explain publicly.”

Shasha-Biton used her power to repeatedly delay, stymie and sometimes reverse decisions to shutter pools, gyms and beaches, insisting there was insufficient evidence that these were venues for COVID infection. Subsequently, she questioned a sudden and sweeping decision to close restaurants, calling the limitations imposed on them “arbitrary.”

Some of Netanyahu’s political allies briefed the media at the time that her actions would be directly responsible for creating more COVID-19 cases.

Her opposition to those restrictions led to instant popularity among parts of the population who believed that the economic and social impact of drastic measures to fight the virus were causing as much or more damage than the disease itself.

It also made her a hero to some COVID skeptics and denialists, who praised her in their social media groups for ‘standing up’ to the health ministry’s consensus, although she herself does not associate with their world view and has spoken in favor of getting the vaccine.

While Netanyahu’s attempts to remove her from her chairmanship fell flat, the animosity remained and few doubted that Zohar’s prediction would prove true. It was no surprise, then, when Shasha-Biton became the first Likud member to bolt the party for Gideon Sa’ar’s breakaway New Hope faction, which ran for the first time in the March 2021 election and garnered six seats.

Shasha-Biton told Sa’ar before joining his party that her dream job was to be education minister. While she made headlines as a fighter against lockdowns, she wanted to return to her main field of expertise. At the end of a dramatic coalition-building process in May, she was able to fulfill that dream, entering the Education Ministry with an ambitious agenda. This included introducing a shortened school week, reduced emphasis on exams, new programs preparing students for a high-tech future and a new focus on social and emotional learning.

But two months after she assumed the role, Shasha-Biton is once again in the headlines because of her approach toward COVID-19 restrictions, shadowing all of her other plans for the ministry.

She entered office hoping to reform wide parts of the Israeli school system. For the time being, though, her main focus will be to see if Israel can even start the new school year on September 1.