The Strange Israeli Election Season Turns Even Dirtier

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NUMBER OF DAYS UNTIL THE ISRAELI ELECTION: 1

ISRAELSTREET endorses NAFTALI BENNETT for Prime Minister

Head of “HaBayit HaYehudi” (The Jewish Home) political party

“We can’t have peace with the Palestinians. Enough. How long can we talk about this? We can only reach coexistence . . .”

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There have been terrorist incidents from Haifa to the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem today. Knives, pipe bombs, rocks, guns, Molotov cocktails . . . always check back on this blog every few hours to read the israelstreet breaking news ticker . . .

TODAY’S BLOG:

This strange and dirty Israeli election season is coming to an even more ignominious conclusion. 

Holy books burned at a Shas headquarters in Or Yehuda today.

It is a season that has turned even dirtier today with Shas (the Sephardic orthodox party) having one of its party headquarters vandalized with religious books burned; Jewish Home (Naftali Bennett’s party) having its campaign billboards and posters defaced; and the Tzipi Livni party having graffiti written on the side of one of its offices this evening. Even the tiny “Power to Influence” party was unable to have a meeting today because someone threw tear gas into its meeting place.

One of many Bennett billboards literally "defaced" in the last 24 hours.

It is a season that has seen an explosion of complaints filed by various parties against other parties with the Israel Election Commission. Jewish Home has successfully filed a complaint against Likud forcing Likud to take down incendiary comments about Bennett from its Facebook page; Likud has filed a successful complaint against Jewish home for creating campaign posters featuring Bennett and Netanyahu; the list goes on and on.

But most of all, it has been a season of bizarre political strategy focusing on incendiary in-fighting within the center-left block and within the block on the right.

What happened to the Israeli “center-left” parties? Shelly Yachimovich (Labor), Yair Lapid (Aesh Atid), and Tzipi Livni (Tzipi Livni party) have been so consumed with destroying each other that they have been unable to present a unified front against Netanyahu.

What in the world has happened to Netanyahu’s Likud Beiteinu? It has spent all of its time and resources attacking its ideological soulmate– Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home–and completely ignoring its ideological adversaries.  

In fact, as of this evening, Jewish Home finds itself under scandalous attack from all sides. Aside from the neverending attacks from Likud Beiteinu, Tzipi Livni has filed yet another petition with Israel Election Commission to have the number 14 person on the Jewish Home election list disqualified for hypothetical comments he made about the destruction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

The rabbinic leader of Shas, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has issued a declaration that Jewish Home is the party of “goyim” because Jewish Home supports easing the conversion process, and because the 5th person on the Jewish Home list, Ayelet Shaked, supports civil marriage in Israel.  Yosef went on to say that Jewish Home is made up of “wicked people who hate Torah and its commandments.”

Dirty, dirtier, dirtiest. Your humble servant, as most Israelis, will be happy to see this unseemly election season come to a conclusion.

Tomorrow–israelstreet’s election predictions. 

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