He appeared dressed in scrubs like any member of the medical team, complete with regulation personal protective equipment, only he was surrounded by the hospital’s director and a team of physicians. It was Oct. 7, and Yamina party chairman Naftali Bennett was paying a visit to the coronavirus intensive care unit ward at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. He could easily have been mistaken for a run-of-the-mill member of the team in the middle of an exhausting day. That’s exactly the image he wanted the media to capture.

Later that day, Bennett tweeted: “And a word about ‘togetherness.’ I met doctors and nurses, men and women, Arabs and Jews, religious and secular, all of them pouring heart and soul into one noble purpose — saving human lives. … Let’s put our differences aside and beat the coronavirus together. Together we will win!”

Just one day earlier, Bennett visited the southern tourist town of Eilat, which was closed to vacationers because of the second quarantine and now faces an employment level measured in tens of percentage points. Flipping back through Bennett’s calendar shows that just about every day over the last few months, he went out to the field to visit business owners who were impacted by the virus and to hear the anguished outcry of the unemployed. Every single one of these visits received the requisite documentation on the various social networks. All the while he offered an alternative plan to dealing with the coronavirus than what the current government is offering. He even put out a book (two months ago) in record speed titled “How to beat an epidemic.’’

This flurry of activity has proved successful. Dramatic polling results, already released by Channel 12 on Oct. 6, showed Bennett breathing down the neck of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (23 seats for Yamina compared with 26 for Likud if elections were held today). It’s a remarkable achievement, especially considering that as late as April 2019, Bennett was considered political deadwood. His party failed to pass the electoral threshold, and it was not at all clear that he could rehabilitate himself.