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On 23 February, India accounted for 11 million of the world’s 112 million Covid-19 cases and 156,498 of 2,848,247 world deaths. Only the US had more cases and the US, Brazil and Mexico have recorded more deaths than India. Yet India’s Covid mortality rate of 113 deaths per million—only 35% of the global average of 319—places it 112th of 221 countries and other locations (including, for example, the cruise ship Diamond Princess) covered by Worldometers.

I discussed India’s Covid situation in the global context in an academic article in January. What’s interesting since then is the extent to which India is suddenly attracting world attention. One component of this is the surprisingly low mortality rate considering the many adverse initial conditions in the country.

The second is the overdue recognition that India is a vaccine superpower with a US$42 billion pharmaceutical sector, including US$20 billion worth of exports in 2019–20, a point I alluded to in a Strategist article in June. In combination with the country’s emphasis on vaccine affordability and access, this gives India the potential to be the pharmacy to the world.

It also gave India the self-confidence to refuse emergency-use authorisation for the Pfizer vaccine, based on trials in Germany and the US, unless it met the Indian regulator’s demand for a local safety and immunogenicity study as a ‘bridging trial’. Pfizer withdrew its application.

As with everything else, India does things by scale. In January, the BBC noted that India produces 60% of world vaccines by number of doses. The Guardian published an interview with Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the single largest manufacturer of Covid vaccines in the world by volume, on 14 February. It expects to be making 100 million doses per month by the end of March. Another company, Bharat Biotech, has the goal of making 200 million vaccines annually.

Matching India’s impressive private-sector manufacturing capacity scaled up to meet world needs is the emerging character of India’s vaccine diplomacy. The key consideration driving the country’s vaccine exports is a careful balance between world needs and demand. This echoes the government’s commitment to prioritise the poor, the vulnerable and the frontline workers in the domestic vaccination drive.

India has enormous experience in implementing mass-vaccination programs for smallpox, tuberculosis, polio and other illnesses. At full stretch, India will be vaccinating 85 million people per month. By 22 February, in 38 days India had vaccinated 11 million people. The goal is to cover 300 million people by the end of July.

India’s donations to neighbouring countries Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan are nearing 6 million doses. India has pledged another 10 million doses to Africa and 1 million to UN health workers. As Indian vaccines arrived in Johannesburg, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar tweeted on 2 February: ‘In it together. Made in India vaccines land in Johannesburg, South Africa. #VaccineMaitri’ (maitri means friendship.) Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Kuwait, Morocco and Brazil are also in queue.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has been the beneficiary of Chinese largesse with a donation of 1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine in two consignments. At the virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly on 18 May, President Xi Jinping affirmed that a coronavirus vaccine would be ‘a global public good’ and represent ‘China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries’.

It’s worth noting that this language is a challenge to the big (by market capitalisation) Western pharmaceutical firms’ drive to enforce intellectual property rights on all countries. China and India have been the leaders against that, arguing for affordable access for the people of poor countries as a higher priority.

Peter J. Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and a former science envoy in the Obama administration, argues that compared to China and Russia, India’s approach is ‘more of a pure expression of true “vaccine diplomacy”’. ‘The likelihood is that India is going to rescue the world in making low-cost high-quality vaccines available and responding quickly to the new variant to adjust their vaccines accordingly.’ By contrast, China seems more intent on linking exports to exerting political influence, he said.

Duke University’s Global Health Institute notes that, in an ugly outbreak of vaccine wars, rich nations comprising just 16% of the world’s population (including Australia) have cornered 60% of the global vaccine supply (4.2 billion doses) and low-income countries have secured only 270 million doses. Yet even on purely self-interested calculations, the equitable distribution of vaccines is essential: the rich world cannot be free of the threat of Covid-19 unless all countries have reached herd immunity by a combination of pre-existing immunities, infection and vaccination. Recreating a healthy rules-based international order that breaks down barriers to the free flow of masks, protective gear, test kits and pharmaceutical supplies would be a global public good.

Last April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted India to become ‘the global nerve centre of … multinational supply chains in the post Covid-19 world’. In his virtual address to the UN General Assembly on 26 September, Modi boasted that India’s pharmaceutical industry had sent essential medicines to more than 150 countries and promised: ‘India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting this crisis.’

‘Sicken thy neighbour’ policies led dozens of countries to impose restrictions, including outright bans in some cases, on exports of critical medical supplies like masks, medicines, ventilators and disinfectants. Espousing nationalist rhetoric and policies, while abandoning international cooperation, aggravated the crisis. Governments can better protect the people they claim to represent by reversing the equation—ditching pandemic nationalism and embracing global cooperation instead.

Finally, albeit somewhat unfortunately, there’s also an element of schadenfreude in Indian circles that a developed Western country like Canada, whose do-gooder instinct often leads to irritating moralistic lectures on India’s perceived human rights failings, should see its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau phoning Modi on 10 February in a plea to boost vaccine supplies. Modi said India ‘would do its best to support Canada’s vaccination efforts’, but the request came too late to make the cut in India’s initial allocation of vaccines, subject to export restrictions because of the massive domestic need, to 25 countries.

As the world bets on vaccines as a way out of the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccine candidates have quickly become a vehicle for national influence. China, Russia and India, for example, are each quick to publicly celebrate, through traditional media and official social media accounts, every new country that signs up to use their vaccines.

Stories are often promoted that emphasise the safety and affordability of countries’ vaccines. However, as vaccine-producing countries jostle for market share and political leverage for their products, some are prepared to resort to disruptive or deceptive tactics.

The battle over vaccine narratives has led to online influence and disinformation campaigns that aim to mislead or to amplify potentially negative news about rival vaccine candidates without proper context. Such behaviour could erode public trust and vaccine uptake, delaying global efforts to eradicate the disease and recover from the severe social, political and economic damage caused by the pandemic.

Russia reportedly went so far as to launch a covert disinformation campaign in 2020 designed to target and discredit the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine. And already this year, both Chinese and Russian state media and official social media accounts have amplified unfavourable reporting about the Pfizer vaccine.

In early January, the Norwegian Medicines Agency reported that around 30 people died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, most of whom were described as ‘frail’ nursing-home residents. While Pfizer is an American company, the vaccine was developed by an international team.

The news attracted considerable attention, including in Australia, where the government sought more information from Pfizer and Norwegian health authorities. It remains unclear ‘whether the reported deaths following COVID-19 vaccination are simply a function of age and declining health, or whether the vaccine may have played a role’, according to ABC News. The Norwegian Medicines Agency has since said there was not yet evidence of a direct link.

These reports were seized on by media in China and Russia, as well as by anti-vaccination influencers on social media. In addition to highlighting the deaths in Norway, one narrative pushed by state-linked media outlets focused on perceived double standards by Western media in their coverage of negative stories about their countries’ candidates. A 15 January editorial in the Global Times suggested that ‘major US and UK media were obviously downplaying’ the deaths.

Chinese and Russian vaccines have faced tough questions about their efficacy and the robustness and transparency of their testing regimes. In recent weeks, a Brazilian trial of a vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech found that it was 50.4% effective at preventing symptomatic infections in ‘very mild’ cases, a lower success rate than was initially indicated.

Tweeting about the Norwegian Pfizer incident on 16 January, a reporter for China’s state-owned broadcaster CGTN asked whether any ‘major US or European media’ had picked up the story. ‘Not that I can see’, she wrote. ‘Imagine if 13 people are assessed to have died from Chinese-made #vaccines, it would have made headlines EVERYWHERE!’

The same day, she tweeted two screenshots of headlines about potential Pfizer vaccine-linked deaths in Germany. Without context—10 older people reportedly died out of an estimated 800,000 Germans vaccinated—the screenshots paint a frightening picture of the vaccine’s potential side effects.

Both tweets were retweeted by Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, who has more than 877,000 followers.

On Facebook, the 15 January Global Times story received at least 7,200 interactions on public posts, according to the social monitoring platform Crowdtangle. It was shared by the verified account of French politician François Asselineau, which received the most Facebook interactions, followed by his party page, Union Populaire Républicaine.

Another story on 19 January said Chinese health experts were advising Australia to halt approval for the Pfizer vaccine following the deaths in Norway. ‘Australia should broaden its choices of COVID-19 vaccines, such as purchasing Chinese-produced inactivated vaccines’, the article said.

The claimed lack of Western media coverage of alleged Pfizer vaccine-related deaths was also echoed by Russian state-linked social media accounts and outlets. Sputnik News ran a story claiming, ‘Despite numerous signs of the Pfizer vaccine having side effects, the American shot has not received that much scrutiny in the mainstream media.’

The Twitter account linked to Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, @sputnikvaccine, shared the Global Times opinion piece, commenting, ‘A view from China on vaccine politics and double standards of media coverage’, as well as other reporting about the Norway incident. Since late 2020, the account has tweeted news coverage highlighting the price of the Pfizer vaccine compared with Sputnik V and the risk of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine.

Russia Today has also reported on Pfizer side effects that have not been confirmed as definitively linked to Covid-19 immunisation. For example, a link to a story in Russia Today about one woman’s potential yet unconfirmed side effects received more than 11,000 interactions in the form of reactions, comments and shares on Facebook, according to Crowdtangle, and was shared by a number of prominent anti-vaccination influencers.

Our analysis of 455,940 tweets mentioning vaccine-related terms between 11 January and 19 January found an overall shift towards negative sentiment on vaccines following the Norwegian Medicines Agency report. This suggests that negative portrayals of one vaccine might erode public trust in all vaccination programs.

Tweets mentioning ‘pfizer’ had the greatest relative increase in negative sentiment across the eight-day period. Sputnik V and Covaxin both also had highly variable sentiments reflecting polarising debates over each vaccine on Twitter. In the graphic below, positive and negative numbers represent degrees of positive and negative sentiments.

The amplification of stories about vaccine side effects or deaths that are not definitively linked to immunisation without proper context has the potential to undermine public health and may be seized upon by the anti-vaccination community.

A number of anti-vaccination influencers also jumped on the Pfizer story. Similar to the CGTN reporter’s tweet about Pfizer, some users posted screenshots of media headlines that could cause fear when presented without context on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

News outlets must take particular care with their headlines, recognising how they can be displayed in screenshots and posted on social media to serve particular agendas. As CNN has reported, headlines without proper context create ‘the risk that people see only that there have been fatalities and get the false impression coronavirus vaccines are dangerous’.

Proper scrutiny of all Covid-19 vaccines is essential to ensure public trust and safety. And as vaccination programs roll out around the world, reporting about allergic reactions and deaths will continue—even when a clear link with a recent inoculation has not been established. If nations continue to deliberately amplify such stories without proper care, it could have a dangerous impact both on vaccine uptake and trust in the public health agencies tasked to deal with ending the pandemic.

In a year when Australian and other parts of the world have been battered by savage storms, intense bushfires, a pandemic or a combination of all three, it’s time to rethink how we approach threats to our national security.

The warning is delivered by West Australian Labor MP Anne Aly in the third volume of ASPI’s After Covid-19 series edited by Genevieve Feely and Peter Jennings.

Aly notes that the past decade has demonstrated that contemporary threats to our security and wellbeing come from unconventional sources in a landscape that’s much more complex and multidimensional, and much less predictable.

She writes that it’s 75 years since the end of World War II but, where conflict has endured, that milestone will have warranted little more than a passing nod—‘or perhaps a cynical sigh’.

‘In other parts of the world, consumed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the anniversary might give us pause to reflect on the changing landscape of international and national security’, she says.

For Australians, the year began with the bushfires blistering through the nation’s heart. A grieving population assessed the damage, dusted itself off and drew on strength and compassion to recover. Then the pandemic swept through China, Europe, Asia, North America and Australia.

Covid didn’t respect borders, form an orderly queue or discriminate, says Aly. ‘It can’t be shot at, bombed, arrested, turned back or sent home. Our front line of defence doesn’t wear army fatigues and carry a gun but is made up of ordinary Australians—hospital staff, nurses, retail workers, security guards, childcare workers, teachers and police.’

She says the ‘traditional’ hard strategies involving military force, policing, intelligence and legislation have proved insufficient for ensuring long-term security. They should be combined with soft power to respond to the root causes of issues such as violent extremism by considering social, economic, political and historical contexts.

In this diverse collection of political views, House of Representatives Speaker Tony Smith describes how Australia’s parliament adapted to the pandemic with new rules and practices. The institution proved resilient, and practical changes were adopted with bipartisan agreement and the use of technology.

For the first time, MPs took part in some parliamentary proceedings remotely, says Smith. The fact that proceedings were already broadcast via the internet, radio and television meant that Australians could observe the work of the House even when public access to the chamber was suspended.

Greens senator for WA Jordon Steele-John says the pandemic exposed fault lines in systems and flaws in approaches to problem-solving. It’s shone a light on the fragility of our economy in the face of external pressures, exacerbated global tensions and set the scene for an explosion of economic inequality.

We’ve arrived at a crossroads, Steele-John says. Do we continue to spend billions on military technology and further exacerbate global tensions, or invest in solutions to the real health and environmental challenges we’re all facing and focus on fostering global cooperation and conflict resolution to address people’s needs in a post-Covid world?’

Steele-John says billions are wasted on military posturing while real needs in Australia and the region are ignored. ‘It’s this type of tired, hawkish thinking that’s taking focus away from understanding, and prioritising, the real challenges before us and for which we can effectively plan’, he says.

‘The reality of our time is that we’re living in an age of climate crisis and accelerated ecological collapse. Right now—not in some distant future—climate change is putting the things that we care about at risk.’

New South Wales Liberal senator Jim Molan writes that Australia faces two challenges, Covid-19 and its deteriorating strategic environment, and it needs a national security strategy to manage both.

Molan says Covid has created an acceptance of change while the strategic situation has been recognised and key countermeasures have been initiated in defence, foreign interference, manufacturing and cybersecurity.

He says Australia has achieved great things as a liberal democracy, but it’s been rich and secure enough to hide imperfections and inefficiencies. ‘That era has finished’, he says. ‘To just re-establish the nation that we were before the pandemic wouldn’t be a triumph or even an achievement. It would be a lost opportunity, a tragedy, and possibly an existential one.

‘We have an obligation to turn the post-Covid period into Australia’s renaissance though vision, policies and strategies that create a self-reliant, prosperous, sovereign nation at no permanent cost to our real freedoms.’

Victorian Labor senator Kim Carr says there’ll be no return to normal when the pandemic recedes. Ways of thinking that dominated past policymaking are no longer tenable, he says. ‘The pandemic has comprehensively demonstrated the failure of neoliberal economics.’

That was, says Carr, a vision of Australia as essentially a farm, a quarry and a beach, but not a place where people make things.

Australians found that initially the nation couldn’t produce enough personal protective equipment for healthcare workers or enough ventilators for intensive care units in hospitals.

Carr says the government has accepted that Australia needs a thriving manufacturing sector if it’s to avoid such a crisis again.

Some kinds of manufacturing, such as steel, aluminium, cement, chemicals and plastics, are strategically vital, he says. ‘And, because those heavy industries are big energy consumers, the question of how to revive manufacturing can’t be separated from the question of how to provide reliable supplies of affordable energy while also meeting our international obligations on climate change.

‘It’s only by building sovereign capabilities in manufacturing that we can diversify Australia’s economic base and thereby reduce our exposure to the impact of global downturns and our excessive dependence on certain markets, most notably China.’

South Australian Liberal senator David Fawcett says Covid-19 has brought supply-chain integrity into stark focus and exposed vulnerabilities in commercial practices which often rely on components imported ‘just in time’. Disruption in supply can undermine Australia’s ability to function as a first-world nation.

The current federal approach to procurement can’t be relied on to deliver value for money in critical areas when under stress, says Fawcett, and the nation must ask three vital questions:

1. Which critical supply chains can no longer be entrusted to free-market, just-in-time replenishment?
2. How do we support those critical supply chains to generate a sustainable and scalable domestic capability?
3. What do we need to change in our approach to procurement to achieve that?

The answers will make Australia more resilient and capable of responding independently to threats or crises, Fawcett says.

Greens leader Adam Bandt writes that in successfully responding to the pandemic, Australian governments did unexpected things. ‘Governments put scientists ahead of vested interests. The wellbeing of Australia’s peoples was put ahead of a budget surplus. The public healthcare system was exalted’, he says.

Covid-19 also exposed neoliberalism’s frailties, says Bandt, shown in the exclusion of casual workers from the JobKeeper wage subsidy, the use private contractors to run hotel quarantine, the failure to regulate for-profit aged care, and a market-driven approach to housing supply that allowed public housing to be treated as a low-quality, residual solution for people in need.

Australia, like most of the rest of the developed world, also stumbled in the early days of Covid-19 because it hadn’t heeded the advice of scientists and hadn’t adequately prepared for a pandemic, says Bandt.

‘The lessons here are clear’ he says. ‘We must put science at the centre of policymaking at the same time as we put care at the centre of political strategy. We must do this not just to prepare for the next pandemic but because the next emergency that scientists are warning us of is already here, threatening our health, our security and our species’ very existence. For all the deprivations brought about by Covid-19, they pale beside the looming impacts of the climate crisis.’

Think tanks and key leaders from around the world will meet in a massive online event this week to search for ways to reset history in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Friday 20 November, ASPI will take part in the ‘Global Town Hall’, a set of moderated discussions on foreign and security policy matters with a strong focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

It will take in the pandemic, the implications of climate change and cooperative measures that might head off disaster, and the impact of nationalism and populism, and examine the likely role of the United States under Joe Biden and in the fallout from Donald Trump’s reign.

ASPI’s executive director, Peter Jennings, spoke with Dr Dino Patti Djalal, a veteran Indonesian diplomat and the founding director of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia think tank, which initiated the discussions.

Jennings observes that out of the Covid catastrophe has come opportunities for such discussions and it has proven easier to get key people together online than it was before the pandemic when speakers flew around the world to conferences.

‘I think it’s a great idea and in particular I’m intrigued with the idea of tracing the clock of the globe as we go around the world with different think tanks handing over to counterpart think tanks’, says Jennings.

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo will make the scene-setting keynote address.

Australian participants include Foreign Minister Marise Payne and former prime minister Kevin Rudd. The foreign ministers of Indonesia, China and Russia will speak.

Djalal says the world is facing one of the greatest crises in modern history and notes hopefully that crises usually lead to change.

‘We want to examine how we guide and work for that change to ensure that we don’t return to the world as it was but that we have a stronger and better world’, he says.

Djalal will open proceedings with a session examining how 2020 has been so different to previous years and anticipating what will happen in the next year or two.

This opportunity for a ‘great social reset’ will be discussed by Payne, former East Timorese president José Ramos-Horta, Malaysian MP Nurul Izzah Anwar and the Reverend Kyoichi Sugino, deputy secretary general of Religions for Peace, an international coalition of religions seeking an end to violence.

India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will be keynote speaker in a session on ‘The Indo-Pacific and the Covid-19 crisis: What are the next steps?’

Jennings will be a panellist with former permanent secretary in Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Bilahari Kausikan; Professor Richard Heydarian, a non-resident fellow at Stratbase ADR Institute; and Dr Ruan Zongze, executive vice president and senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies.

Rudd will be a panellist in a session titled ‘Geopolitical reset: Is a world of more cooperation, less rivalry possible?’ The keynote speaker for the session will be Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

Other panellists will be former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa and Professor Kishore Mahbubani, distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute.

They’ll search for ways to build a just, equitable and harmonious global society. ‘And if there is going to be a geopolitical reset, what will it look like?’, asks Djalal. ‘What impact will Biden have as US president?’ And what happens to nationalism and populism during the time of Covid as leaders come under pressure to deliver rather than being able to play the demagogue?

Another session will examine the need to provide the people of the world with equal access to Covid-19 vaccines when they become available and, asks Djalal, ‘is that realistic, or utopia?’

The likely consequences of climate change will figure strongly. ‘I do believe that as we aim for economic rebound, it should not just be about achieving normal growth but it should be about achieving a decarbonised economy’, Djalal says.

The final session will be on ‘Welcome back, America’ with, says Djalal, ‘a big question mark’.

‘We are yet to see how President-elect Joe Biden will return America to activism and leadership, which we all hope, of course.’

For more information and to register for the Global Town Hall, click here.  

When the Jewish new year began late last month, Israel was enduring its second nationwide lockdown, after daily per capita Covid-19 infection and death rates reached some of the world’s highest levels. How did a country with practically closed external borders, sophisticated technological and institutional capacities, a high-quality and efficient health-care system, and a culture of solidarity in wartime fail so spectacularly at addressing the pandemic?

Although long years of neoliberal economics have certainly taken their toll on the country’s welfare system, the answer lies elsewhere. Partly, it is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deceitful, divisive approach to managing the crisis—and to governing more generally—that has been laid bare. But, more fundamentally, Israel’s pandemic failure reflects the deeply fragmented society and dysfunctional political system of which Netanyahu has taken advantage throughout his career.

The virus has exposed Israel as a polarised federation, whose various tribes put their sectarian interests ahead of the common good. The ultra-Orthodox community, for example, has sought to exercise its autonomy above all—and it has paid the price, with the country’s highest Covid-19 infection rates. Though this community comprises only about 12% of Israel’s population, it accounts for about half of all infected people over 65 and under 18. Until recently, Israel’s Arab community—21% of the population—did not lag far behind.

But Israel’s minorities do not have a monopoly on the defiance of norms. Breaking conventions, an innate lack of discipline, and disregard for authority—the very traits to which some experts attribute the country’s extraordinary creativity as a ‘start-up nation’—are national hallmarks. Netanyahu and his ministers who were caught violating the precautionary rules they had imposed on the country reflect a broader phenomenon; the government hasn’t exactly been a role model for the unruly public.

Netanyahu has built his career on stoking sectarian divisions. In contrast to French President Emmanuel Macron, who has now launched a campaign against ‘Islamist separatism’ in France, Netanyahu has thrived on a rapidly escalating Kulturkampf. In particular, he has formed a corrupt coalition with the ultra-Orthodox community, whose political support he has bought with the labour and sacrifice of other segments of society.

For starters, he actively encourages the unproductive, burdensome lifestyle of the ultra-Orthodox, who have staggeringly high fertility rates (averaging 7.1 children per woman, compared to 3.1 overall). Moreover, barely half of ultra-Orthodox men participate in the labour market. And the community includes about 135,000 yeshiva students, who refuse military service and study only scripture—an education that leaves them unfit for modern life.

Who pays for this lifestyle? Israel’s dynamic, secular middle class, which produces much of the country’s wealth, carries the burden of military service and accounts for a large share of the government’s tax revenues.

Now, the pandemic is compounding these costs. Rather than heeding expert advice and imposing targeted lockdowns on hard-hit communities—such as the ultra-Orthodox—Netanyahu chose nationwide measures, punishing the groups that make Israel’s economy run to avoid targeting a key constituency. The entire country is effectively a hostage to political expediency.

But Netanyahu’s motivation for imposing another lockdown extends well beyond mollifying the ultra-Orthodox community. His corruption trial, which has already been delayed by his lawyers’ obstructive tactics, will resume in January. Netanyahu would eschew no dirty trick to disrupt the proceedings, which threaten to keep his bribery and corruption scandals, and questions about his fitness to lead, in the national consciousness.

Netanyahu’s anti-corruption trial is also a key motive for his repeated thwarting of an agreement on a new budget. As long as there is no agreement, there will be regular opportunities to dissolve parliament and hold new elections, an outcome that might finally enable Netanyahu to form a coalition willing to bar the indictment of a serving prime minister.

To be sure, in late August, Netanyahu agreed to a 100-day extension with his coalition partner, the Blue and White party’s Benny Gantz, narrowly avoiding Israel’s fourth election in two years. But that probably reflects the fact that opinion polls indicate a sharp decline in support for Netanyahu’s Likud party. Netanyahu probably hopes that this will change by the time the next budget deadline arrives.

In the meantime, he is hoping to change the conversation, not by providing real leadership, but by stifling dissent. He has been using the Covid-19 crisis as a pretext for conducting China-style digital surveillance and sharply limiting the freedom to protest.

Mass demonstrations over Netanyahu’s alleged corruption and the government’s handling of the pandemic have been raging for months. To get protesters off the streets—and out of the news—Netanyahu backed a rule banning protesters from holding demonstrations more than one kilometre  from their place of residence, under the guise of stopping the spread of Covid-19. The measure was also aimed at appeasing his Orthodox allies, as it created a false symmetry between the ban on protests in open spaces (where the risk of infection is minimal) and the restriction of prayers in synagogues (known infection hotspots).

But the move backfired. Unable to participate in the single localised protest in front of the prime minister’s Jerusalem residence, demonstrators began protesting close to home—all across the country.

This nationwide display of popular rage is also a model of creative, orderly civic resistance. The array of groups leading the charge—with names such as ‘Black Flag’ and ‘Crime Minister’—largely comprise young, educated and conscientious Israelis and many self-employed workers facing severe economic hardship. They are unlikely to give up easily, despite Netanyahu’s best efforts.

But while Netanyahu’s narcissistic leadership demands resistance, the upheaval in Israel carries significant risks. Israel is besieged not only by a deadly virus, but by identity politics, sectarian strife and dishonest leadership. As the economic consequences of lockdown multiply, social and political tensions will only rise. As President Reuven Rivlin noted ominously last week, ‘the air is full of gunpowder’.