Neither Arab nor Jewish jingoism

Avraham Burg addresses a Hadash meeting on January 3rd, 2014, earning much criticism for havng travelled there on the Sabbath.

Hadash subscribes to Arab unity, with reservations

Socialist party insists on Jews and women in joint Knesset list; former Labor MK Avraham Burg rumoured to mull run

By Elie Leshem, Times of Israel
January 04, 2015

Israel’s Arab parties inched closer to a unity deal Saturday after a meeting of the socialist Hadash party ended in a decision to pursue negotiations on a merger with the Balad and Ra’am Ta’al parties.

During the meeting in Nazareth, Hadash, which has both Arab and Jewish members, decided to condition such a deal on the inclusion of Jews and women on the joint ticket, Haaretz reported Sunday.

Ahead of March’s Knesset elections, lawmakers from Ra’am-Ta’al and Balad have been hard at work overcoming their own deep ideological differences and constructing a shared “pan-Arab” list that might stand a better chance of passing the 3.25 percent electoral threshold passed into law last year.

MK Ahmad Tibi (Ra’am-Ta’al) is the favorite in polls of Arab voters for leader of a new, unified slate, including in a recent poll conducted by Nazareth’s Arabic-language Kul al-Arab newspaper, where Tibi was favored by almost half of respondents.

Recent polls have predicted five Knesset seats for Hadash, which would put the party above the electoral threshold, albeit by a narrow margin, without requiring it to run jointly with the other Arab parties.

However, Haaretz reported, party officials fear that should they jeopardize the prospect of a unified slate, Arab voters will punish them on election day.

Hadash’s meeting in Nazareth was attended by Avraham Burg, a former member of Knesset for the Labor Party and speaker of the house.

Burg, who enrolled as a delegate, said that he would support Hadash in the upcoming elections and urged the party to remain distinct from the two nationalist Arab parties and promote a “powerful campaign by a Jewish-Arab list.”

“I left the Jewish national space because it became jingoistic, and I didn’t come all the way here just to connect with [Arab] jingoism,” said Burg, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, in an allusion to Balad and Ra’am Ta’al.

He called for “full solidarity” between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Reports in Hebrew-language media speculated as to whether Burg’s participation in the conference signaled that he was considering a second career in politics.

“Avraham Burg has joined the Hadash party,” a party official was quoted by the news site Ynet as saying.

“Perhaps in the coming days there will be further developments involving him,” the official added. “There is a chance that he’ll run [for a seat] with the party, but nothing can be finalized at this point, so long as there is no decision on unity among the Arab parties.”

In the outgoing Knesset, Hadash featured three Arab members — Mohammad Barakeh , Hana Sweid and Afu Agbaria – and a single Jewish one, Dov Khenin.

Burg, an Orthodox Jew, said that he had traveled to the conference on Shabbat, contravening a religious prohibition, because advancing solidarity between Jews and Arabs was “a matter of life and death” that trumped the ban.

Haviv Rettig Gur contributed to this report.

Former Knesset speaker Burg could run for Jewish-Arab party Hadash

Burg, the son a prominent religious Zionist leader, and a former head of the Jewish Agency, could run with Hadash – a predominately Arab list with roots in Israel’s communist party.

By Hassan Shaalan, Ynet news
January 03, 2015

Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg attended a meeting by the joint Arab-Israeli party Hadash (historically affiliated with the communist party) which took place in Nazareth Saturday and expressed his support for the leftwing party.

“In the next elections I will support Hadash,” he said, though it is far from certain he will run for a spot on their Knesset ticket.

A source from within the party, which touts a list of both Jewish and Arabic contenders, most famously MK Dov Khenin, said that “Burg has joined Hadash, and it is possible he will run in the party, but at this point nothing is final, but there will be developments in coming days.”

After the Israeli government passed a controversial governance law which saw the election threshold go up, Israel’s three Arab parties decided to consider the possibility of running together to maximize their respective power.

Balad – a nationalistic party – and Ra’am-Ta’al – a party with a religious Islamist orientation – will probably run together, but Hadash – a joint Jewish and Arab party with roots in Israel’s communist party – have yet to decide.

“Until the party decides about running on a joint Arab list, nothing is final,” the political source said, explaining that Burg’s candidacy was contingent on the decision.

Burg, the son of a prominent leader from Israel’s religious-Zionist movement, served as Labor party Knesset member from 1995-1998 and then again between 1999-2004, and also served as the 15th Knesset’s speaker.

He also served as head of the World Zionist Movement and the Jewish Agency.

MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) seen outside the closed entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City on October 30, 2014. Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90. He has left Likud, because party members only put him 36th on the party list, but he claimed he was leaving on principle to form a further-right party.

Feiglin quits Likud to form new party after primary furore

By Jewish News
January 07, 2015

One of the Likud’s most right-wing Members of the Knesset said he was leaving to set up his own party, in a week of jostling and manoeuvring among Israeli politicians ahead of the March election.

Convicted of sedition in 1997, Moshe Feiglin led the Likud’s far-right faction and has been accused of inciting violence by making regular prayer visits to the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

Feiglin’s move comes after a furore surrounding the Likud primary last week. Widespread allegations of vote-rigging followed a Sunday recount, which pushed a female politician off the list. Claims of uncounted ballots were dismissed by the Likud hierarchy, and appeals were turned down.

Elsewhere the leader of Yesh Atid, the Knesset’s second biggest party in the last election, said he was considering adding a representative of the gay community to his list, while former Likudnik Moshe Kahlon named his first female candidate.

Early polls suggest Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud will get 22-24 seats, an improvement on last election. Centrist and left-wing parties are expected to win less than they did in January 2013, leading analysts to predict that the next government will be one of the most right-wing in recent memory.

Kulanu party chairman Moshe Kahlon (L) and Dr. Yifat Sasha-Biton on January 5, 2015. Screen capture: Channel 2.

Khalon adds first woman to Kulanu list

From Haaretz election update
January 07, 2014

Moshe Kahlon adds former Kiryat Shmona deputy mayor Yifat Sassa-Biton to his list, Kulanu. Sassa-Biton is the first female candidate on Kahlon’s list. Born and raised in Kiryat Shmona, she is currently the vice president of the Ohalo College in Katzrin. Sassa-Biton has been on Kiryat Shmona’s city council for the past six years, in charge of the youth and education portfolio for five of those years. “Yifat is a symbol of perseverance, decisiveness and success,” said Kahlon.

Does Eli Yishai’s party have a chance?

The former Shas leader may form a successful ultra-Orthodox right wing party.

By Yair Ettinger
December 19, 2014

Behind every successful ultra-Orthodox politician is a rabbi; sometimes he’s a dominant influential figure, sometimes just window-dressing. Rabbi Meir Mazuz, head of the Kiseh Rahamim Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, is apparently of the first kind, and to understand MK Eli Yishai’s new party, Ha’am Itanu, one should hear what the rabbi whom Yishai swears by has to say.

In an interview this week on the ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Berama, the rabbi said precisely who the new party would court. Mazuz says he is not interested in the hard-core of Shas, the party from which Yishai broke away, but rather the Orthodox of the knitted skullcap genre “who could fall straight into Bennett’s arms, referring to the Habayit Hayehudi chairman, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. He also said the party was courting “a number of the tribes of Israel, whether the settlers, their rabbis, hardalnikim [nationalistic ultra-Orthodox ] and simple Jews who keep the Sabbath, lay tefillin and go to the army.”

Behind every politician is also a successful adviser with a plan. The Frenchman Michael Abujadir has kept carefully to the shadows for more than 20 years now, but all that time he has been Yishai’s strategist who tells him that the future is on the right. Now Yishai is gambling the whole pot on it with his new right-wing party, Ha’am Itanu. The party’s leaders say they want to end the war of mutual recriminations with Shas, and talk only politics. In other words, they would prefer to persuade the public that Shas and its chairman, MK Aryeh Deri, are leftists.

The success of the first ultra-Orthodox right-wing party depends on whether it is joined by the National Union-Tkumah faction. If it does, it could be the Big Bang in the Orthodox political world, realigning the wearers of black skullcaps with the knitted skullcaps.

A Haaretz poll taken on Thursday showed the new party with the same number of Knesset seats as Shas, each on the edge of the voter threshold, with a predicted four Knesset seats. Shas, which has steadily held its two-digit place is shaking its head in shock.

Yishai embarked on this adventure for personal reasons – his long-standing feud with Deri. But now we want to know what his spiritual patron and his strategic consultant want, and how exactly the party reached three to four Knesset seats according to surveys.

During a press conference he called on Monday Yishai avoided answering any questions as to whether he is still true to the Shas spiritual leader, the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that land could be given in exchange for peace and was against going up to the Temple Mount.

Though every opinion poll shows that the ultra-Orthodox are right-wing and nationalists, they have never produced an openly right–wing party that is hawkish on security and calls for a hard line on foreign workers, as Yishai is planning. Shas and United Torah Judaism have always hoped to be a political fulcrum so as to protect yeshiva funding and social benefits and even when they went with the right, they never forgot the rabbis’ mantra that “with the left you can do business.”

The right-wing parties – Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, as well as the extreme right, like Otzma Leisrael in the last elections, have taken full advantage of the gap between the ultra-Orthodox street and its politicians and have swept up votes since the Oslo Accords, particularly from ultra-Orthodox minorities like Chabad and the modern Orthodox. Yishai wants to take these and other such groups by storm.

MK Yoni Chetboun, currently a Habayit Hayehudi MK is expected to bring with him votes from French new immigrants that he brought to Habayit Hayehudi at the time, but it is not clear how many of them will cross the lines with him. He could actually strengthen Yishai’s standing among the ultra-Orthodox, many of whom regard him as a hero for voting against his own party on the matter of drafting the ultra-Orthodox. However, according to the editor of the French language edition of Hamodia, Daniel Hayek, Yishai has a problem with the French immigrants because many of them are living in Israel without becoming citizens.

The head of Likud’s campaign among the ultra-Orthodox, Yaakov Vider says Likud has about 3,000 ultra-Orthodox members. “Does Yishai threaten ultra-Orthodox strength in Likud? “If there is concern that Yishai won’t pass the electoral threshold, support for him will decline massively. If he rises in the polls that can be a great success. Of course, we think it’s better to support Likud, to be part of the government,” Vider says.

According to Mazuz, the reason for the split with Shas was because Deri “said a long time ago that we [Shas] are going with Herzog,” referring to Labor’s chairman MK Isaac Herzog.

Panels/Knesset Channel poll on 21/12/2014

Panels conducted a poll of 500 people; its results were published by the Knesset Channel and it has a 4.6% margin of error.

There are 120 seats in the Knesset. Parties must receive at least 3.25% of the vote in order to be elected to the Knesset. After elections are held the coalition forming a government must receive 61 votes in a vote of confidence in the Knesset.

Notes and links

Polls and the past

List of Israeli political parties, performance in 2013 (2nd) and polls’ prediction for March 2015 (1st)

By BICOM
December 22, 2014

No. of MKS at this week’s polls, current Knesset seats in brackets.

23 [21] Zionist Camp (Labour and Hatnuah The Movement)

21 [18] Likud (full name National Unity Liberals)

16 [12] Jewish Home

07 [13] Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home)

11 [19] Yesh Atid (There is a Future)

09 [–] Kulanu (All of us)

07 [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ (United Torah Judaism)

05 [11] Shas (acronym for Sephardi guards (of the Torah)

04 [-] Haam Itanu (Eli Yishai’s Party, The Nation is with us)

07 [06] Meretz (Energy)

5 [04] Ra’am-Ta’al, Arabic movement for Renewal Plus United Arab List

05 [04] Hadash The democratic front for peace and equality

00 [03] Balad Country

00 [02] Kadima Forward