This Israeli election season has not failed to surprise with crazy news and influential events happening on a daily basis, sometimes even more frequently than that.
This does not take the cake, and it is nothing like what happened yesterday, but it is big news and surprising.
If the Haredi parties did not have enough trouble this election season already, and if they were not already facing tremendous obstacles in these elections, another wrench just got thrown in. And somehow it comes from Bet Shemesh.
Kikar is reporting that a new Haredi party has officially registered for the coming elections, and it is a party that is based in Bet Shemesh.
The name of the party is "Perach - shefa, bracha, chaim v'shalom". The party is registered by a list of 10 people, all Haredim living in Bet Shemesh. The names listed are, both men and women; Bracha Malka Nueman, Malka Rosenbaum, Rachel Ednan, Shalom Eliezer Herbst, Shlomo Steinberg, Yehudit Steinberg, Yitzchak Shag, Chana Shag, Asher Weinreich and Fraidy Weinreich. I looked up a few of the names in the local directory and they live in the neighborhood of kneh Bosem, a.k.a. Heftsiba, which is a completely Haredi neighborhood.
No list for Knesset seats is mentioned yet, so I don't know if this new party will be including women on its list, but the women are at least involved in the establishment of the party. In the little information mentioned about it, women as MKs or in any capacity is not mentioned as its goals, but economic issues are.
The party says its focus will be on establishing a list of a thousand basic items that will have their prices slashed by half (they call this the shefa aspect), bringing down cost of housing (the bracha aspect), doubling the wages of soldiers (the chaim aspect), and promoting territorial exchange for true peace (the shalom aspect).
I clearly don't know what they are offering differently than any other party. All this can be done as lobbyists or pressure groups from outside the Knesset. Do these 10 people think they have the solution for peace that everyone else has not been able to discover? cost of housing or cost of living? It could be that they do, but this seems to me, right now, to be a silly little enterprise. I wonder where they will get their support from. And, I wonder what they really want - it is hard for me to believe they really plan on running. I would expect they are looking to pressure a different party to take one of their people or to put something from their platform at the head of their focus or somethign similar..
Anyways, if the Haredi parties weren't hurting enough, this is going to be another thorn in their side, and at least a distraction.
#IsraelElex
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