Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Netanyahu opens TikTok account, promotes COVID-19 vaccine

The Israeli prime minister uses the social-media platform to urge the public to follow his lead as the first in the country to receive the shot.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference at the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on Dec. 9, 2020. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference at the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on Dec. 9, 2020. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Moments after being the first Israeli to be inoculated against COVID-19 on Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined TikTok by posting his first video outside the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv where he received the vaccine.

“While I was getting vaccinated, you opened a TikTok account for me?” he asked his aides. He then urged the public not to let that platform be a replacement for reading books.

“Go get vaccinated,” the prime minister added, reiterating what he had said earlier, right after receiving the shot.

Jokes have been circulating on the Internet about possible side effects from the vaccination, such as the growing of a tail. Netanyahu referred to the memes by quipping that he hadn’t grown a tail since receiving the injection on live TV.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Pramila Patten also boasted that she had informed the Israeli mission to the United Nations that she would refuse to visit its detention facilities “even if they offered.”
The accord is the latest sign of the newly strengthened relations between the countries.
The Israeli singer “crossed generations, communities and sectors, becoming an inseparable part of the soundtrack of our lives,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said.
“In the Gaza Strip, we are clinching Hamas from all sides. ... We don’t allow them to arm themselves or harm us, and we also eliminate their senior commanders,” the premier said.
The Bank of Israel stepped in to protect high-tech exporters from a currency that their own success created.
Authorities on Crete detained a 37-year-old man suspected of ties to the Islamist organization and planning attacks, including against Israeli targets.