Holy Exposures Commentary and Photos of Israel

Abutbul Running for Bet Shemesh Mayor

Moshe Abutbul is the Sha”s candidate for Mayor of Bet Shemesh.  In the final day before the elections, RBS residents have gotten a steady flow of mail box goodies from Abutbul’s camp.  Surprisingly, we’ve seen little from Vaknin or Lerner in the last day.

Today’s Abutbul flyer makes the case for the Anglo RBS community in English with prominent members of our community who have come out in support of this candidate.

This flyer claims that Abutbul is good for RBS and that he speaks for all residents here.  Notice, however, that the sampling of voices chosen to support him also speak volumes of who he is.

1. No women here.

2. All Anglo Haredim.  We don’t see any kippot srugot here.

3. No mention of what party he represents.  You would think from this flyer that Abutbul is running as an independent.

Following up on yesterday’s post, to the credit (sic!) of the perpetrators of yesterday’s mess, by this morning, most if not all of them were cleaned up.

However, not to be undersold, today’s leaflet shows that the old bard still has some fight left in him!

Well, I’m impressed that at least this time someone is fessing up to having distributed this.  (We cannot assume however, that Vaknin’s campaign actually did send this - politics is a strange business).  Likewise, I find it interesting that the pashkevilas have switched to English. Is that not a true ’sign of the times’?

Vaknin Supporters Have Switched to English

It’s just a few days before the local municpal elections and the “dirty” politics of Bet Shemesh are heating up.

Residents of Bet Shemesh woke up this morning to a blanket of leaflets all over the streets of Dolev, HaYarkon, HaYarden, and more.  The latest leaflets have been particularly nasty in language, at least for the Ramah. Also, it’s apparent that the candidates are targeting the Anglo community as most of the pamphlets are in English.

Political Garbage in Bet Shemesh

This particular leaflet really sums it up.  The candidate (or supporters of this candidate) are relying solely on a negative smear campaign against incumbent Danny Vaknin.  The leaflet, written in English, includes a photo of the trademarked Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch.  (ed. I wonder if they are paying royalties to the rightful owners of this trademarked content).

The real irony here is that the streets of RBS have been relatively clean in recent years.  In fact, the biggest mess I’ve seen has come from the political process and all the paper strewn about the streets.  This message, with the cowardly politician who hides behind it without divulging his name, recklessly sent teenage kids out last night to literally spray our otherwise clean streets with their political messages about how the streets should be cleaned up.

I hope that the ones responsible for this mess will clean it up quickly.  I also wonder if this is the message of the winning ticket, is this what we can expect in the coming years…

What do you think?

What should we do?  How do we get the message back to the candidates that we want positive information, not anonymous smear and negative campaigns.  Please let us know what you think!  Reply below and I will B”N pass it on to our friends at City Hall.