"The vaccine is much worse than the corona" • "We should not be the responsible adult" • Hard to believe, but quite a few teachers, kindergarten teachers and education staff simply refuse to get vaccinated • Experts warn: "Teachers' ethical duty to protect themselves and their students. We can not return to routine "
So far, only 45 percent of the teaching staff have also been vaccinated in the second dose (those photographed have nothing to do with the article)
Photo:
Illustration: Oren Ben Hakon
"I will do
everything to not get vaccinated, for my own reasons, no one can force me. Anyone who says it is not responsible, it is better not to say anything. I will not put into the body substances that I do not know what they are, and do not know that they help against infection."
These things, which relate to the corona vaccine, were not said by Corona deniers.
They were also not told by an employee in a closed office who did not come into contact with people.
Behind the fierce resistance is a kindergarten teacher in pre-compulsory kindergarten, one who meets our children every day, that is, when there is no closure, who is supposed to hug them and hold them in their arms, who believes in their safety and health for a considerable time.
Only a week into the partial opening of the education system, and kindergartens and classrooms are already closed, and many children are sent to solitary confinement due to illness of faculty members who have chosen not to be vaccinated.
School principals in many cities have passed questionnaires among teachers about their intention to get vaccinated, a procedure that is not legally anchored, but claims to be designed to protect students and teachers and map out vaccinated and unvaccinated teachers.
At the same time, alarmingly, many groups and Facebook pages have been opened that unite educators who go against the call to vaccinate them and in favor of the rights of teachers who choose not to be vaccinated.
As these began to be shut down by the social network fighting opponents of corona vaccines, groups with the same agenda were opened up on the Telegram and WhatsApp as well.
"It's a real shame," wrote a member of one of the teachers' groups, in response to women professionals who wrote in favor of the vaccine.
"Everyone will choose what to do with their body. It's like we will oblige the parents to get vaccinated, all the parents of the kindergarten without exception, and if not - the child will not be able to get to the kindergarten because he too can infect, and even those who are resilient can be infected and infected! One what to do with his body! "
In another statement, an educator wrote: "It is illegal to prevent you from returning to work due to a lack of vaccination. If this happens, you should contact a lawyer. And your full right to your body. Recommends ignoring all the pressure around and making an informed choice."
Another teacher wrote: "It is important to maintain humanity !!! A person's basic right is to choose to get vaccinated ... every person and his considerations are! ... we become monsters."
"We are called vaccine opponents, but I only oppose coercion," says Michal, an assistant at a multi-age kindergarten in the north (all the teachers interviewed here appear under a false name, at their request).
"The vaccine is a more unknown fence treatment than a known one, when no one really knows what its long-term consequences are, so I choose not to get vaccinated.
" What bothers me is that it is an invasion of my privacy and my medical file.
It is coercion and it has severe social consequences.
Violent discourse is created because of this treatment, which in my opinion is not right, so I choose not to receive it. "
When I remind her that this is an effective vaccine that has been researched, Michal is upset." I am a person who tends to read a lot and research a lot, like before any medical treatment.
And according to my conclusions, all this 'Cold Cold' vaccine, it's not a vaccine as people call it a vaccine.
Maybe in a year I will decide otherwise.
"And this is exactly the point, that I have the right to choose whether to do a medical procedure in which a substance is injected into my body, or not. For me and my children. Where does it sound that in order to undergo medical treatment people are bribed or denied their basic rights? My son does not go to school "A killer after taking off a mask to drink. I work with toddlers in kindergarten, and am amazed at how quickly they get used to another life. The reality is changing before our eyes, not for the better."
Eden, a first-grade teacher in Rishon Lezion, does not understand why the treatment of the teaching public is different from the treatment of the rest of the population.
"Why aren't we called citizens?" She asks angrily.
"Should we be the responsible adult? So I have the status of a teacher, who earns a penny and a half, and we are not valued. Even if you see that many have chosen not to get vaccinated, they should be tolerant and not force or make statements like 'will not return teachers', because it causes more antagonism Great for some teachers. "
According to her, even before the teachers were given priority in prioritizing vaccines, the school principal where she teaches the transfer between the teachers an electronic document with tables with data about who is vaccinated, who is interested in getting vaccinated and who does not intend to receive the vaccine.
"At the same time, the school counselor went through the teachers and asked who was going to get pregnant, because the recommendations at first were not to get vaccinated at the beginning of pregnancy or before getting pregnant. And every week the saga repeated itself.
" Suddenly all our medical privacy is gone.
The whole team needs to know if I was vaccinated or not, and the counselor needs to know if I am planning a pregnancy or not.
I am really in the beginning of pregnancy, and even if I was not pregnant I would not want to get vaccinated, because the vaccine is experimental and I will not take a risk on my body.
"Treat us as human beings. Where is the humanity? When we have students who are sick in Corona they do not give us their names because of medical confidentiality. So I as a teacher have to give everything? Like any citizen, I too have the option to consider the matter."
Not every citizen comes into daily contact with dozens of students who cannot be vaccinated on their own.
"I do the calculations myself. I am one teacher who keeps the rules, in front of 30 students who are not vaccinated and do not follow the instructions. What does it matter if I am vaccinated when everyone is not vaccinated and do not pay attention to masks and hygiene? Do you know how much I comment on masks? Put on masks. So what does it matter if I am vaccinated, when everyone is not vaccinated?
"Students do not need to know what I am doing with my body.
When we force someone to do something against their will, we are sending the wrong message to students.
If the price of not getting vaccinated is to get tested every day or two, I'd rather get it than get vaccinated. "
According to the Ministry of Health,
immunization rates among teachers are still relatively low for the population: about 60 percent of teaching staff were vaccinated in the first dose, and only 45 percent in the second dose.
Because in the view of the Ministry of Health, the role of educators is not only to impart knowledge and maintain the health of students, but also to enable the opening of educational institutions as part of the process of returning to routine and opening the economy - trying to combat the phenomenon of refusal by all means.
"A teacher who does not get vaccinated abandons the safety of students and is promoted," Health Minister Yuli Edelstein tweeted this week, declaring that he would not hesitate to oblige educators who do not get vaccinated to undergo corona tests frequently.
However, a survey of 20,000 teaching staff by the Teachers' Union shows slightly more encouraging data: According to the survey, 76.4 percent of the respondents were vaccinated, 18.5 percent were not vaccinated, and 5.1 percent recover from Corona.
Of those who responded that they were not vaccinated - 30.3 percent stated that they do not intend to be vaccinated at all.
"If the teachers get infected in Corona, both the children and the parents will stay at home and there will be no economy," cried the secretary of the Teachers' Union, Yaffa Ben-David, two months ago, when she threatened to strike if teachers did not receive priority vaccinations. "Teachers are not babysitters." "We are at risk like the medical staffs."
This week, the teachers' union stressed that they believe that the response to vaccination among teaching staff will increase, and again called on teaching staff to get vaccinated.
"Teaching staff have shown responsibility throughout the Corona crisis, and were the first to enlist in the distance learning project and thus saved the education system," Ben-David emphasizes.
"We trust the teaching staff, and we are sure that they also show responsibility in the matter of vaccines. Even at the end of the process, the rate of vaccinated among teaching staff will not decrease and may even exceed the rate of vaccinated in the general population."
Is it not the duty of teachers to set an example?
"The responsibility of teaching staff to students needs no proof, and it exists equally in normal times and during a crisis.
" We said before, if the legislature determines that all civil servants are obliged to be vaccinated, we will abide by the law. "
Also on genes national and led by parents nationwide are angry "Some of the kindergarten teachers' decisions not to get vaccinated." We gave them priority in vaccinations, and in the end they do not get vaccinated and it is annoying, "is angry Sigal Spitz Toledano, chairman of the kindergarten committee.
"At the moment the children are not vaccinated, which means that the staffs endanger the children, and we will support any government action that requires educational staff to be vaccinated.
" We respect the privacy of kindergarten staff, but parents contact them personally and ask if we have been vaccinated.
It may not be appropriate, but only then can they be sure that their children are protected.
We also encourage parents to get vaccinated, but it is more important that those who work with children get vaccinated.
"We've heard of gardeners claiming they have nothing to do with other staff members who are not vaccinated. Parents also have nothing to do in such a situation, and they remain helpless and in daily anxiety. It's part of the profession, and we know otherwise we will not see the end of the epidemic."
"Vaccination is an effective means assured, not only to protect yourself but also as a return to normalcy as much as normal during the corona," says Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, chairman of the Association of Public Health Physicians and a member of the cabinet of experts of the "Star of Israel".
"This Certainly important in the context of the education system.
On the other hand, we oppose the forced vaccination.
One should take care of information and positive incentives as much as possible.
Teachers are at the forefront, and it is important that they set a personal example, but at the same time the education system must be backed up with additional tools from the 'Education Shield' program, aimed at early detection of illness, such as testing, teaching in capsules while reinforcing teachers and creativity, including outdoor teaching.
"The education system has been closed for too long and all the tools, including the vaccine for teachers, need to be used to get it back to normal."
Academics are
also
trying
to combat the refusal of vaccines among educators and teachers.
"As a philosopher and a liberal citizen I can accept the principled position that we have the right to choose what we put into the body. But as a professor of philosophy of education and as a former school principal, there is no doubt that Ministry of Education employees in schools and public and private kindergartens should be vaccinated," emphasizes Prof. Arieh. Kisel, from the Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa.
"These are public employees who want professional respect, for example in the form of increased punishment for those who attack educators. Therefore, the respect should come from the other side. The treatment is similar to doctors, who as public employees would expect them to behave in a certain way.
" About themselves and their students from infection.
Today the teacher not only enters the classroom and delivers to the lesson, but his work has many therapeutic elements.
They are expected to emotionally support children, to know what is going on at home, to have an attentive ear for vulnerability.
Consequently, they expect to be rewarded and treated as educators in the broadest sense of the word.
This is the unwritten contract we have with the teachers.
And today we, as a public, can expect them to respect the other side of the contract, to be protected and not contagious. "
The right way to explain to teachers the importance of the vaccine, Prof. Kisel argues, is by setting up a public committee made up of teachers' unions and medical and medical ethics staff, who will jointly formulate a recommendation document for teachers, including how to treat a teacher who does not want to be vaccinated.
"Teachers need to take on more commitment. True, there is no code of ethics for teachers as there is for lawyers or medical professionals, so there needs to be an inclusive and purposeful dialogue. The fear of the vaccine is in all of us, and it can be understood. But as long as it is not vaccine opponents in principle, "Teachers are at the forefront of working with young people, and once they are contained, their concerns can be allayed. I, too, as a teacher, have been vaccinated, even though I am not facing classrooms at the moment."
The government is currently formulating
an outline according to which no pressure will be exerted on educators to get vaccinated and no sanctions will be imposed, but education workers who are not willing to get vaccinated will work from home, as far as possible, or go to the IDF.
Some local authorities are not waiting for the outline. For example, Mayor Yavneh Zvi Gov Ari announced two weeks ago that a teaching worker in his city who would not be vaccinated or provide a negative corona test every day - would not be able to enter an educational institution. A similar statement was issued in Nesher, when Mayor Roi Levy announced that no Vaccinated will not be allowed to enter the schools, and at the same time urged the parents of the students and kindergarten children to vaccinate themselves to prevent illness and isolation.
Against the decision of some of the authorities, Adv. Gilad Yitzhak Bar-Tal from the small law firm, Lorenz, Bar-Tal, Talmore, Asher Together with Adv. Rotem Brown, she represents a group of hundreds of educators who want to preserve their right not to be vaccinated. Some of them, Adv. Bar-Tal emphasizes, are vaccinated themselves and are not vaccine opponents anywhere.
Two weeks ago, a request was submitted on their behalf to the Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, to act to stop the pressure on them to get vaccinated.
They were answered by the Deputy Attorney General, Adv. Raz Nazri, that as long as there is no law in the matter - the local authorities are not allowed to prevent the entry of teaching staff, students or other education staff who have not been vaccinated into the educational institutions.
"We have recently been confronted by heads of local authorities and other senior officials in the economy who oppress the freedom of choice and the free will of many people - things that amount to a violation of freedom of occupation," says Adv. Bar-Tal. "The ability of these elements to intimidate an entire public is alarming. , And is a slippery slope to infringing on additional rights unnecessarily.
"We are following with great concern the latest developments regarding the Vaccines Law, and we are already preparing a petition to the High Court in order to preserve every citizen's basic right to choose which medical treatment to receive, and which substance will enter his body."
The call to get vaccinated is addressed to the general public, and to teachers as a special population.
"There were other populations that were given priority even before the teachers, and we did not see there a move of coercion to get vaccinated. There is no reason to capture the teaching staff, which is high quality and special, where women and men who came mostly from ideology of education. We must wonder why there is no such necessity towards workers in other professions, including medicine or other populations at risk.
”Teachers serve as an educational example.
It is the right of every person to choose the medical treatment he receives.
Currently, the position of the manufacturers and the official position of the Ministry of Health are that the vaccine does not prevent the spread of the virus but helps prevent the entanglement of the disease in that vaccinated person, and other statements are pieces of information.
"Therefore, the statement that a teaching worker who enters a classroom where the majority are not vaccinated may be a risk factor for everyone, is nothing but cheap demagoguery. But the question is more fundamental, do we force a person to receive medical treatment.
" Important and true, this is definitely a value group, which cares about educating the future generation of Israel and that there is room to do good with it, and those of you who want to get vaccinated should take all means to do so, but there is no room to force those who do not want to get vaccinated.
"This population teaches children and the future generation about pluralism, about accepting the other, about the simplest thing - that their body is in their possession. Unfortunately, we see how in recent times there are growing calls not to respect these basic values, and it is sad to see that."
Abigail, a teacher
at an elementary school in the center of the country, is one of hundreds of teachers who turned to Adv. Bar-Tal. According to her, the teachers' union's initial demand to give teachers priority in vaccinations was very justified, but something went wrong along the way.
"I am young, and healthy, less Afraid of myself, so I was in no hurry.
But very quickly the vaccine became a kind of condition for further work.
A discourse is created in the media, in which senior people place the health of children and the world on the shoulders of teachers and their private medical decisions.
The Ministry of Education instructs school principals and all kinds of department heads in the municipality and in the Ministry of Education to collect medical information about teachers, and in fact encourage witch hunts.
"Obviously the epidemic needs to be treated, but it can not be done at the expense of basic social values. At the moment we do not know whether the vaccine is good or not, there is this and that information, but there is currently an epidemic of hatred and division, and we resent it."
Studies have shown that the vaccine is effective.
"Everyone talks like they're at least a doctor of medicine. I'm talking based on knowledge published by official bodies like the vaccine manufacturers themselves, that the vaccine probably doesn't really protect against the spread of the disease, maybe just reduces the spread. We get poison here which, according to what I see today, is much more Worse than the corona.
"The epidemic needs to be addressed, and we are willing to cooperate and have shared so far, as we have maintained masks and explained to children the importance of maintaining social distance and hygiene.
But we do not live in a bubble.
The kids go out, and go to all sorts of places, and we don’t know if their parents are vaccinated or not.
"I am an educator, when my doctor talks to me I would love to hear from him. Even if it turns out in time that the vaccine is effective, coercion will cause morbidity and moral mortality.
" We are willing to accept responsibility and willing to set a personal example, but it can not be at the expense of fundamental rights.
We are threatened that we will not have a livelihood, that we will be on the margins of society.
We are labeled as disease spreaders.
How does it go with the idea of a democratic state and mutual guarantee and human dignity?
It's just a social catastrophe. "
Without teaching staff there is no going back to school and no opening of the economy.
" True, and anyone can rely on their general information and knowledge, and choose whether to get vaccinated and maintain themselves or not.
But to condition the continuation of work on immunization is to condition the basic rights on medical action.
"I teach the children that my body is in my possession, and that the other should be respected. Why did the Israeli government forget this lesson, which is taught in first grade?"
Educators
who did choose to get vaccinated did so out of a clear understanding of their role in the system, and there were even those who got vaccinated early - even before they were given priority.
"As soon as I was allowed to get vaccinated, I left," says a kindergarten teacher from the Sharon area.
"I'm in a risk group because I'm over 65, and work all day with small children who are most important to look after. I can not help but hug the children, kiss them, that's the main thing they need from me as a teacher. So there was no question here, it was clear I would accept The vaccine, when I know I have the option to protect both myself and them.
"The assistants who work with me were debating whether to get vaccinated or not.
It's apparently not my business and they have the right to decide for themselves, but it does affect the children.
I am vaccinated and will not have to be in isolation in case they or one of the children turns out to be blue, and I would not want any of them or the children to be in this situation.
"One of them is not going to get vaccinated yet, and I can not tell her anything. It's an uncomfortable feeling."
Limor is a high school teacher who participated in the "Shield of Education" program, in which bi-weekly corona tests were taken from students and teachers to identify asymptomatic patients.
"We had no problem participating in the tests," she emphasizes.
"All out of a value understanding that we are here to set an example and to prevent the infection of students and their families, and to enter the isolation of students in whole classes and their families - a procedure that disrupted the whole system.
" People can not be forced to get vaccinated, but it seems to me Where we work and staff health, it is important to get vaccinated.
"Just this morning I spoke to one of the staff at the school, a 40-year-old guy who opposed the vaccine. He told how much he thought the corona was Pike News and nothing more than the flu. I felt the need to explain to him the importance of the vaccine and its responsibilities to his elderly parents, students and the environment. "For his parents, he will still be vaccinated. I see this as our public responsibility, out of an understanding of the profession and not out of necessity."
The Ministry of Health responded:
The Ministry of Health takes action on many levels to encourage the public to get vaccinated, including education staff, through information and personal assistance, rather than imposing a duty to get vaccinated.
The ministry launched Operation Returns in the Education System as early as January 12, out of an understanding of the enormous importance of vaccinating teaching staff.
The ministry gave priority to education and teaching staff in immunization, not even by age groups.
In addition, this week the ministry distributed a bill that would allow the ministry to pass on to the authorities and the Ministry of Education identifiable information about who was vaccinated and who was not, in order to enable these bodies to promote the increase in immunization.
As a complementary action, the ministry is working to enact a law that would require workers in places with audiences, including the education system, to present negative test results every two days to those who refuse to be vaccinated.
Regarding the difference between the data of the ministry and the data of the Teachers 'Union: Ms. Yaffa Ben-David presents only the data of the employees belonging to the teachers' union, which constitute only 120,000 of all employees of the Ministry of Education.
The data presented by the Ministry of Health include the immunization data of all staff in educational institutions, and therefore the gaps.
No response was received from the Ministry of Education.
batchene@gmail.com
