A Facebook group with thousands of members, which opposes Israel’s vaccination deployment and has devised strategies for sabotaging it, has been shut down by the tech giant for the second time in as many weeks.
The group is one of many in Israel that stands accused of spreading misinformation about vaccines against Covid-19 and causing a slowdown in the pace of immunization in the country.
Israel has vaccinated some 43 percent of its population with at least one shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but some officials have complained about growing refusal from the remaining part of the society to take the shot.
“At the beginning of the campaign we got used to inoculating between 100,000 and 120,000 people per day, and in the last few days we are barely reaching half of those figures,” Kalanit Kaye, a senior official at Clalit Health Services, a leading Israeli healthcare provider, said earlier this month, blaming “fake news” for the decline.
The Hebrew-language Facebook group ‘Saying no to the green passport’, which was shut down by the platform on Tuesday, is one of those widely blamed by the Israeli media.
Named after the immunity certificate that the government plans to roll out soon, it reportedly rejected the label of ‘anti-vaxxer’ given to it by the press and said it simply stood against vaccination coercion. The ‘green pass’ certifying immunity will give holders privileges like access to gyms and sporting events, as Israel emerges from its lockdown.
