Israeli election update #26 - Yesh Atid MK Shimon Solomon has announced he will not be running in the upcoming election. Solomon, an Ethiopian immigrant, was #12 on the Yesh Atid list in the last election. - Meretz has released their first campaign ad (other than their response video to Jewish Home’s first campaign ad - see update #3), showing a boring wedding which is then turned into a big party when Zehava Gal-On and other Meretz MKs come in singing and dancing: youtu.be/cgNNOal0RZk Within hours the video spawned parody versions, such as this one mixing it with Maroon 5’s Move Like Jagger: youtu.be/VCFd_LjotTU and this one using music from a Hamas propaganda video: youtu.be/q3EWTUjsbe0 - The Jerusalem Post interviewed Labor/Hatnua #2 Tzipi Livni (in English): jpost/Israel-Elections/Jpost-Election-Arena-Livnis-consistent-vision-388659 There is a full transcript of the interview at that link as well. - The Arab parties have officially united into a joint list for the election. Yesterday, things started moving when Raam-Taal-Mada split into two parties, Raam and Taal. Taal became a one-man party with MK Ahmad Tibi (whom Herzog was talking to recently about joining the coalition). It seems the split in the party was made to help form the new joint Arab list today. The slate will be headed by Hadash Chairman Aiman Ouda, who only became the Chairman recently. The second slot goes to Masud Ganaim (head of UAL - the party that Taal split from), the third to Jamal Zalalka (head of Balad) and the fourth to Ahmad Tibi (head of Taal). There is one female member of the slate, MK Haneen Zoabi (#7), and one Jewish member, MK Dov Henin of Hadash (#8). There is a bunch of complicated rotations of positions in the slate, but mostly in the seats beyond where they are currently polling (11 seats). On the one hand, the joint Arab list will likely get more Arabs to vote which might increase their representation in the Knesset. If it pulls Arab votes that normally go to Jewish parties like Labor, Meretz and Shas, however, it will ironically increase the chances of a ring-wing coalition. - Jewish Home candidate Ronen Shoval has filed a petition with the Central Elections Committee to disallow Labor/Hatnua from using the name ‘The Zionist Camp’ pointing out that the party members have made a series of clearly Anti-Zionist statements, thus making the name misleading and false advertising. - It now appears that the Netanyahu speech before the US Congress will take place on March 3, several weeks after initially announced, and only two weeks before the election, to allow Netanyahu to also speak at the AIPAC Policy Conference going on March 1-3 in DC. Obama has said his policy is not to meet with foreign leaders right before their elections, so he will not be meeting with Netanyahu while he is in the country. - Moshe Kahlon’s brother, who is a senior official in his party, is under investigation for corruption. That can’t be good for Kahlon. [Previous update: https://facebook/trauring/posts/10155134195030504]
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:23:26 +0000