Holy Exposures Commentary and Photos of Israel

Nir Barkat

Nir Barkat wins in Jerusalem, beating out Haredi Knesset Member and Gimmel party hopeful Meir Porush.

Incumbents Huldai in Tel Aviv and Yahav in Haifa both won .

After 7 terms in Ashdod, Tzvi Tzikler lost to Yechiel Lasri.

In Bet Shemesh, three term incumbent Vaknin was ousted in favor of Sha”s party candidate, Moshe Abutbul.  (Abutbul 52%, Lerner 30%, Vaknin 18%).

2008 Israeli Election results for all cities available in real time at Ynet (in Hebrew).

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.

Do posters equal voters?  As I reported last week, Shalom Lerner has a huge “poster” lead in Ramat Bet Shemesh Aleph, and in Sheinfeld / Givat Sharet.

The battle lines have been drawn.  Shalom Lerner has the majority of posters up in RBS.  Aside froma couple for Sheetrit, and one for Abutbul, I think Lerner has the Ramah in a landslide.

Sheinfeld is still mostly Lerner.  Migdal Hamayim has Vaknin and Lerner.  RBS Bet has mostly no posters up since it is a sin to vote… (or so the pashkevilas say).  The old Bet Shemesh, including the city center, are mostly Vaknin posters.

What do you think?

Believe it or not, another five years has passed, and it’s time once again to elect a mayor in Bet Shemesh. The elections are set for November. Suprisingly, the current 3-time elected mayor, Danny Vaknin, has not been out on the town.

Having arrived in Bet Shemesh in 1994, a year after Vaknin had won the election from Fadida, I’ve only experienced two elections since, in 1998 and in 2003. In the past elections, there had been a whole series of parlour meetings, campaign stops, questions and answers sessions, and generally good-old politicking beginning many months before the elections.

We are now in September, less than two months away from election day on November 11. This time around, the candidates have only been out on the campaign for a few weeks. I know of four candidates. There may even be more.

The incumbent Danny Vaknin runs for Likud. Natan Sheetrit runs for Moledet, Shalom Lerner for the national religious camp (Mafda”l), and Moshe Abutbul for Sha”s.

I was driving today through the Givat Sharet and Ramat Bet Shemesh sections of Bet Shemesh. I noticed a whole bunch of mayoral election banners, mostly for Shalom Lerner, and more interestingly, none for the incumbent Mayor Danny Vaknin.

Here’s a gallery of some of the banners out there so far. If the election was decided by number of banners, then Shalom Lerner would be leading by a landslide.

The man in the photos is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (Shlit”a).  These posters were part of the last Israel national government elections.  The posters are for the Sha”s party, which is comprised of ultra-orthodox Sefardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

Rabbi Yosef was the Chief Sefardic Rabbi of Israel in the 1980s (Rishon Leziyon) and is considered by many the leading living religious authority on Jewish laws for the Sefardic community in Israel and worldwide.  He is the spiritual leader of the Shas party and has, since its inception, either hand-picked or given explicit approval of all the party’s candidates.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wants you to vote Shas

One of the posters has additional handwritten text which says “Whoever votes for Shas in the elections, Rav Ovadia Yosef promises him heaven (Gan Eden) without sin.  So only vote Shas!”

Editor’s Note:  You can’t beat that!  Just vote for a political party and all your sins are absolved.  Maybe we can teach something to the Americans?  Who knows, one day you may see a campaign poster that says “Barak Obama guarantees you heaven (with 70 virgins) if you vote democrat” in the coming elections