Election roundup Wednesday 21 January 2015: Part 2

(Part 1 here)

Of course now, there are lists and candidates, there can be gaffes and dirt.

There have already been a load of them.

As soon as the Labour primary was finished, Bayit Yehudi put out images attacking the party’s candidates — running as the Zionist Camp — as being anti-Zionist, including quotes in which some candidates appeared to say they supported marking Naqba Day or that the Hatikva was racist. Particular fire has been focused on new candidates Yossi Yonah and Zohir Bahalul, who’ve been involved in activism against Israeli government policies including supporting soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank. The candidates claimed that the short (few-word) quotes used by Bayit Yehudi were taken out of context. This is part of Bayit Yehudi’s main electoral strategy, which seems to be based around attacking Labour as way to prove they ‘take on the Left’.

One of Yisrael Beiteinu’s new candidates is Shira Mistriel, a 24-year-old student from the Facebook generation who didn’t think to clean up her Facebook before entering politics. A trawl of her Facebook wall revealed her joking about a stone-throwing Arab being run over by a Jewish driver in 2010, laughing at him as a ‘smelly Arab’. A few other Facebook comments from her late teens made jokes about Arabs too. This triggered a debate about the use of old Facebook posts in political campaigns and whether it’s fair to blame someone from teenage stupidity.

Another new candidate drawing attention is Bayit Yehudi’s Bezalel Smotrich, one of Tekuma’s members running in 9th place on the Bayit Yehudi list. Mr Smotrich was once arrested by the Shin Bet with 700 litres of petrol, which they believed he was planning to use in terror attacks on Israeli infrastructure to stop the Gaza Disengagement. No charges were brought. Mr Smotri now runs an NGO dedicated to trying to demolish the houses of Israeli Arabs and Bedouin in the Negev if they were built without permits.

Mr Smotrich was attacked this week for running a ‘Beast Parade’ in Jerusalem in 2006 as an ‘alternative’ to the Gay Pride parade, where he implied that gay people were worse than animals. He reportedly told Haaretz “I did it when I was young, and I regret it”. Yesterday it was also revealed that he’d run a campaign to stop bus companies from employing Israeli Arab drivers

Another Bayit Yehudi candidate, Sarah Eliash, 17th on the list, made the news yesterday for her position that women should not serve in the IDF. She told a radio station last year “I think that the IDF is not a fitting framework for women, I would not recommend that girls to be in it”. Ms Eliash, a High School principal, also said that she encouraged girls in her school not to join the IDF and to do National Service instead. While a common position in the National-Religious world, the idea that women shouldn’t join the army doesn’t fit so well with the modern open image the party’s trying to project.

Part 3 will have to wait until tomorrow, when we’ll talk about political ads and more merger rumours.