Candidates Fink, Moatti shift to Barak

Former prime minister Ehud Barak received a boost on Sunday, when he successfully drafted two Labor Knesset candidates to his as yet unnamed party that will be running in the September 17 election.

Barak’s campaign announced that Yair “Yaya” Fink, who would have been 10th on the Labor list, had shifted over. Emilie Moatti, who would have been 16th on the list, confirmed that she, too, was joining Barak.

A religious Zionist, Fink

was the chief of staff for MK Shelly Yacimovich when she headed Labor. When Barak left Labor in 2011, he sent a message expressing joy that Barak left. He said a lot has changed since then and what is most urgent now is replacing a prime minister facing three indictments.

“I’m very happy about Yaya’s joining,” Barak said. “Yaya reflects the broad spectrum of Israeli citizens who have decided to take their fate into their own hands, unite and embark on a path that will bring Israel back on track.”

Fink will help write the party’s platform and run its Knesset faction if it crosses the electoral threshold.

“I am joining a group I really believe in,” Fink said. “We have needed leadership with a knife between its teeth for a long time.”

At a campaign rally for Labor leadership candidate Amir Peretz on Sunday, Labor candidates vowed to take revenge against both Fink and Moatti for abandoning the party so soon after they won relatively high slots for newcomers on the Labor list. A former Labor MK said the careers of Fink and Moatti were finished and that they were “committing political suicide” by “joining the dark side.”

“These endless internal disputes are exactly what is destroying Labor,” Fink told The Jerusalem Post in response. “I tried to fix what needed to be fixed in the party for a decade, and I didn’t succeed. I don’t intend to live my entire life fighting like that.”

Moatti said she was also proud of her decision.

“I have no suicidal tendencies,” she said. “From the moment I was given a public platform, I have called for bonds in my camp, and I will do everything possible to bring them about.”

Barak’s former chief of staff Eldad Yaniv – who later wrote a book about him calling him corrupt – will also be on his list. Yaniv organized weekly protests outside the home of Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit urging him to expedite his probes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. •