Kurz, who was visiting Israel with his Danish counterpart to discuss a trilateral vaccine pact, credited Netanyahu for shocking him into action at the very beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak. After talks and a tour of a gym open to those who have been vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19, Austria, Denmark and Israel announced an alliance to ensure long-term vaccine supplies.
“I will never forget the beginning of the year 2020, when we had a phone call and Bibi Netanyahu told me this virus will be a huge threat to the whole world, to Europe even if we don’t know it at the moment,” Kurz said. “You were maybe the reason we acted quite early in Austria when the first wave hit us hard in the European Union.”
Netanyahu recognized early on in the pandemic that vaccines could save not only Israel, but his political future.
For years, Netanyahu promoted himself as the man who turned Israel into a global tech powerhouse. Now, as he faces a fourth election in two years and an ongoing corruption trial, the Prime Minister is touting his track-record of turning Israel from “Start-up Nation” into “Vaccination Nation.”
Netanyahu has made Israel’s handling of the pandemic, and especially its robust vaccine drive, personal: appearing almost nightly in televised addresses to the country in the early weeks of the pandemic, obsessively negotiating vaccine deals with pharmaceutical companies, receiving the first doses at Tel Aviv’s airport and getting vaccinated on primetime TV.
As Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, life is starting to feel normal again, with schools in session and restaurants back open.
The question now is whether voters will credit Netanyahu with that return to normality enough to shake out the political gridlock that’s gripped the country for the past two years.
“In politics you judge the leader on the outcome, how did the leader handle the crisis and the outcome,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a former media adviser for Netanyahu. In the case of the vaccine program, he added, “the Israelis are quite happy.”
A strong start knocked down by surges
The coronavirus pandemic has played out alongside a political crisis in Israel. The first spike in infections hit last March, just a few weeks after the country’s third election in a year and as Netanyahu was cobbling together a coalition with his rival-turned-partner Benny Gantz.
As the Austrian chancellor noted, Netanyahu took swift action…
Read More: Netanyahu credits himself with bringing Israel ‘back to life.’ Now he hopes