Oshrat Kotler
Oshrat KotlerYonatan Sindel, Flash 90

Journalist Oshrat Kotler slammed Prime Minister Bennett's statements last week during which he claimed that "vaccine-refusers are hurting us all."

Over the weekend, Kotler responded on Facebook, "Those who were vaccinated become infected with coronavirus and infect others with coronavirus, and also develop serious illness. So on what basis, exactly, are you demanding a million people who are concerned about the vaccine to go get vaccinated? I also got vaccinated, and suffered from a very frightening inflammation of the heart muscle, to this day I suffer from arrhythmias, and impaired thyroid activity."

"There are thousands more in the country like me! The FDA warns of this side effect as well as others that have been discovered in the meantime, so how dare you underestimate the concerns of a million people? How dare you turn them into untouchables, into people who endanger others?" Kotler wrote.

Speaking on Sunday morning to Golan Yochpaz and Anat Davidov on 103FM, Kotler said she had watched the speech delivered by Prime Minister Bennett, and admitted: "I was terrified, it still terrifies me. It is a divisive, inciting text with no scientific basis."

"I am in contact with scientists, there is a very big controversy among scientists both regarding the vaccines and regarding the method by which coronavirus disease should be managed or dealt with. Among the billion vaccinated people around the world, if we can believe the data, one million in Israel (who have not been vaccinated) is a minority, so it lacks rights?"

Later, she sharply criticized Bennett, saying: "The prime minister gets up and incites against an entire population, saying they are harming your health - are you crazy? There are doctors - a lot of doctors - 40,000 around the world, who say that people who have not been vaccinated do not endanger anyone else. It's like with the flu vaccine, okay? It's very similar. The technique is different but it's the same thing."

"The vaccine cost me my health"

Kotler noted that she was vaccinated, but she said "it cost me my health. It was terrible, I went to a cardiologist because I thought I was having an anxiety attack. It was unbearable, I had very high blood pressure, twice my normal range. It was frightening, because the heartbeats were in my ears, body, everywhere. I went for tests and found arrhythmias, changes in the thyroid gland."

She said that "There is underreporting [of adverse effects]. This is not a feeling - there are no protocols," adding, "I stopped believing the Ministry of Health the third or fourth time I received incorrect data from them. I recommend all health reporters heavily question Ministry of Health publications," she said.

Asked if she thought the vaccine had saved humanity from the virus, she replied: "I do not know yet. Because all the information at the moment, all the data, is routed through people who are related to the pharmaceutical companies. How can I believe the pharmaceutical companies' reports and studies, which are funded by them, and from which they make billions? I really do not know."

Kotler also commented on the way COVID data is presented by the media, saying "The presentation of this story by the media will be studied in the history of media and world politics. If we had shown for 30 years those 2,500 people who die every year from the flu and had counted every infected person, no one would have left his home."