Bayit Yehudi to advance leadership race
Party MKs endorse Bennett’s decision • Opponent: 50% chance he won’t win
Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett announced Wednesday that he is moving the next election for chairman of his party to an earlier date, immediately after Passover.
The Bayit Yehudi secretariat and election committee will meet on Thursday night to approve the request and set a time for the vote, which is expected to be held in midMay.
Sources in the party explained the request by saying that Bennett sees Bayit Yehudi as a ruling party and wants to catch his opponents off-guard to prevent them from coming up with a candidate to run against him. But Mevaseret Zion branch head Jeremy Saltan, who is close to Bennett, said the reason was much more technical.
“Other parties don’t require elections because they are dictatorships, but we are forced to hold primary elections in polling stations all over the country,” he said. “Likud already had its leadership race, Labor just decided to hold theirs in July. We can’t afford to be caught off guard and to have to focus on domestic politics when a general election would be called, which would put us at a disadvantage.”
Bennett’s associates said the decision had nothing to do with the ongoing criminal investigations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which they said could take a long time. They claimed that Bennett would encourage competition, even holding a special membership drive to facilitate a candidate running against him.
Avraham Cimerring, a vocal critic of Bennett in Bayit Yehudi’s Jerusalem branch, called the decision to hold the primary on an earlier date “political thievery.” He said that at Bayit Yehudi branches across the country activists complain that Bennett does not care about them.
“Bennett did it, because he realizes he is not so strong among the party membership,” Cimerring said. “He and democracy don’t go together. I am sure there will be candidates who run against him, including someone of stature and I am not sure he will win. I’d say his chances are 50-50.”
All the MKs in Bayit Yehudi immediately endorsed Bennett.
“Our party chairman and candidate for prime minister after the Netanyahu era will be Naftali Bennett,” said Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
Two names that have been
West Bank – or have stated their intention to participate in a boycott. However, it is unclear how a “public call” is defined and the ministry is still determining how the law will be enforced.
The BDS movement, which rose to prominence in the mid-2000s, is a loosely connected group of activists and organizations that seek to pressure Israel economically and politically. According to its official website, the movement seeks to end the “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.”
Israel has decried the movement as antisemitic for its attempt to isolate the country. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan maintains that BDS is akin to terrorism because it entails a “rejection of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
“Elisa,” a 23-year-old Jewish American who is a vocal advocate of boycotting the settlements, is worried she may not be able to continue her artwork in Israel. “I am scared to make certain paintings because I don’t want to be placed on some government blacklist,” she said.
The New Jersey native asked: “If I ‘like’ or share something from IfNotNow, Haaretz, Jewish Voice for Peace, will that have me blacklisted?”
Elisa said the BDS ban has made her less likely to apply for citizenship. “If the government bans me because of my political beliefs, it makes me not want to become a part this society even more. It pushes away thousands of progressive Jewish Americans like myself who support the State of Israel but are against settlements and instills even more dissonance in being here, living here and contributing to culture here.”
For other Jewish activists from America, the fear of being barred from Israel has had the opposite effect, pushing them toward utilizing the 1950 Law of Return, which affords every Jew the right to obtain Israeli citizenship.
“Steven,” a 24-year-old Jewish American, also from New Jersey, obtained his Israeli citizenship before the new law was passed, after seeing non-Jewish BDS activists denied entry to the country.
“When I was living in Ramallah a few friends of mine were deported for engaging in innocuous behavior,” he said. “Seeing that first-hand scared me and I felt that if I wanted to have access to Israel and Palestine I needed legal protection.”
Israel entrance on December 5 to Dr. Isabel Apawo Phiri, a citizen of Malawi and assistant general secretary of the World Council of Churches, allegedly due to her support of BDS.
Jennifer Gorovitz, an official with the New Israel Fund, was delayed and questioned at Ben-Gurion Airport upon her arrival last month. She said that the officer interviewing her had a document that said “BDS” on it.
For Sarah, who plans on having children with her Israeli husband, the travel ban does not increase her desire to emigrate from her native New York; however, she said such a move “might just be necessary.” •