One of Israel’s out-spoken anti-vaccination coercion activists has launched a new political party that he believes could cross the threshold in the 2021 election and “help make Israel a healthier country.”
Dr. Arieh Avni has founded the “Rapeh” Party, which means “heal” in English.
Avni formerly served as a doctor with the Clalit health fund, but was fired for unknown reasons in 2000. Since then, he has been running a private, holistic medical clinic.
Rapeh, Avni told The Jerusalem Post, will be composed of doctors, biologists, neuropathologists and other medical personnel and scientists interested in changing the country’s health system.
The party launched around three weeks ago. Avni said the list has not yet been determined but he plans to have it ready by the February 4 deadline.
According to the party’s vision, health is the most important asset, and lack of health takes a steep emotional and financial toll on entire families.
“The role of the government is to ensure the health and well-being of all residents of the State of Israel,” the party’s Facebook page says.
“The goal is that in another year, two or three, Israel will be healthier and the hospitals will have what they need,” he said.
Avni and his party’s methods of making Israel healthier are not necessarily the same as those talked about by other parties. While the larger parties are calling for an increase in the number of hospital beds, doctors and nurses, Rapeh is focused on strengthening preventative medicine.
The party platform includes a number of specific calls to action, such as tackling the issue of human experimentation or implementing new protocols for the use of medical cannabis. It calls for banning medical examinations and vaccinations in schools without the presence of at least one parent; removing radiation from public areas, including schools and nursing homes; ridding the country of toxic pesticides and fertilizer; and encouraging organic agriculture.
“All that is needed to heal is to stop consuming food that is not suitable for our bodies, removing fluoride and chlorine from our water... and taking supplemental vitamins and minerals,” Avni explained. “The body can heal itself.”
Avni said he wants to see complementary medicine covered and accepted equally by the health funds alongside Western medicine.
He stressed that while he has gotten the reputation in some circles for being anti-vaccination, he is not. Rather, he is opposed to methods that coerce or marginalize those individuals that choose not to get jabbed.
As such, he said he is against the Health Ministry’s green passport program that would give privileges to those who have received two doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
Avni is also an outspoken opponent of the methods used by the Health Ministry to handle the coronavirus pandemic. He said the ministry’s “ailments” peaked last year with the coronavirus crisis and “manifested in unbearable medical coercion and violation of human rights: lockdowns, social distancing, cellular tracking, green passports, masks, economic destruction and deceit.”
Avni made aliyah (immigrated) from Poland when he was nine years old and grew up in Beersheba. He studied medicine at Hadassah-University Medical Center and Soroka Medical Center, and did specialty studies in gastroenterology in South Africa.
Eventually, he held a role at Clalit that ended poorly. A spokesperson for the health fund said she had never heard of him.
Once he opened his own health clinic, he started researching holistic health.
His medical license was suspended in 2015 for a month after he publicly accused oncologists of being responsible for the deaths of 10,000 cancer patients every year.
Recently, he published the book And you chose life.
When asked if he really thought his party could pass the threshold and make it into the next government, he told the Post: “The people of Israel have been frightened for almost a year… I don’t think so - I know” the party will get in.