Israel election update #27 - A second and more comprehensive recount of the votes for Avi Dichter and Tipi Hotovely has been ordered by a Likud court. Previously only select ballots were re-counted, but now all votes related to the two candidates will be re-counted. This recount will only affect the position of Dichter and Hotovely, who started out in #20 and #26, and then swapped in the last recount, putting Hotovely into the realistic #20 slot. - Kulanu candidate and former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren has said that Netanyahu should cancel his March 3 speech in front of the US Congress. Netanyahu appointed Oren Ambassador, but later replaced him with close advisor Ron Dermer, who has been closely linked to the arranging of Netanyahu’s speech in front of Congress. - Yesh Atid MK Rina Frenkel is retiring from politics. She has said she will continue to work for the party, but not as an MK. Frenkel is the third Yesh Atid MK to announce they will not be running in the upcoming election. Yesh Atid is the only non-haredi party that has not released its party slate yet. - Channel 10 has said that Netanyahu is considering placing Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick (carolineglick/) in the #11 slot on the Likud slate. Glick is considered a right-wing columnist, and has advised Netanyahu in the past, although she has been very critical of him at times as well, especially over the Gilad Shalit deal. Glick has in the past few years been pushing a one-state solution, where Israel would annex the West Bank and make all the residents citizens, saying the demographic threat’ is overblown. Glick is also the creator of the satirical news show Latma (latma.co.il/elatmatv.aspx) which was online for several years before shutting down, and recently was rumored to be making the jump to Israeli TV. - Eli Yishai met recently with Michael Ben-Ari supporter Rabbi Dov Lior, who is trying to broker a deal to join Ben-Ari’s Otzma Yehudit party with Yishai’s HaAm Itanu party. Ben-Ari is interested in the deal (he is not expected to pass the electoral threshold) but Yishai is not interested (he is on the border of the threshold and may not make it in) as he does not want to be portrayed as an extremist through an association with Ben-Ari (who is a well-known Kahane supporter). Yishai has apparently refused to meet directly with Ben-Ari. A recently poll predicted that if the two parties did join, that they would cause both Jewish Home and Shas to lose seats. - Naftali Bennett has said that there will be no last-minute merger of the Likud and Jewish Home lists. - Perhaps in response to last weeks petition to the Central Election Committee by a Jewish Home MK to bar Labor/Hatnua from using the name The Zionist Camp due to false advertising (pointing out many seemingly anti-Zionist positions their members have taken), an aide to Labor MK (and former party leader) Shelly Yachimovich has filed a petition to ban Jewish Home from using that name, saying many of the policies it and its members support go against Jewish values. Examples given include a report that Construction Minister Uri Ariel sold land intended for public housing to yeshivas instead (which goes against helping the poor), and the claim that Jewish Home did not pay suppliers and people who worked for the party (which goes against the commandment not to delay payments). - Labor/Hatnua candidate Amos Yadlin, who filled security role on the Labor/Hatnua slate as the former head of military intelligence (and will be the slate’s candidate for Defense Minister), has said he supports withdrawing from much of the West Bank and paying settlers to leave. He said he supports keeping settlement blocks, and paying settlers in other areas to leave. He also said that Jerusalem needs to stay part of Israel, but what the exact borders of the city will be should be left to negotiation. - Following the Steimatzky bookstore chain backing down from selling the post-attack issue of Charlie Hebdo tomorrow in their stores after criticism (and threats) from Arabs, including two Arab MKs, Avigdor Lieberman has called on his followers to buy thousands of copies of the newspaper and distribute them to show that Israel is not turning into ISIS. Steimatzky will not be selling this edition of Charlie Hebdo in its stores, but will be selling it online starting tomorrow evening. [Previous update: https://facebook/trauring/posts/10155137872845504]
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 13:09:49 +0000
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