Yesh Atid Says Right-Wing Victory Would Destroy U.S. Support for Israel

By Yisrael Price

YERUSHALAYIM — Thursday was the last day for parties to register for the November 1 election at the Central Election Committee, but it was business as usual for warring political parties, as they took swipes at each other.

Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll, a member of Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, warned of the calamity that would befall the country if right-wingers such as Religious Zionism leader Betzalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit’s Itamar Ben Gvir become part of the next government.

“If we let people like Ben Gvir and Smotrich manage the country, we won’t get the backing of the United States, the economic support or the strength to protect the State of Israel,” Roll said at a Ramat Gan high school forum, according to the Walla news site.

Yesh Atid also made news with an attack on the Likud, which it accused “has become the party of Sephardim.”

“The Likud no longer represents all sectors of Israeli society, has given up its ideology and has become a Sephardic sectoral party,” read a post on the Russian-language website of Lapid’s party, according to Arutz Sheva.

Subsequently, Yesh Atid deleted the comment and stated: “What was written on the website was done by an external editor without the knowledge or approval of Yesh Atid, and certainly does not reflect the party’s values ​​nor its path. Therefore, it was deleted immediately and all other contents were also checked.”

The Likud was not willing to accept the disavowal: “Yair Lapid is calling today in Russian not to vote for the Likud because it is a ‘party of Sephardim’. Lapid’s racism knows no bounds. The Likud is the party of all the people of Israel and we are proud of that.”

Likud MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan said: “Less than an hour after I revealed that Yesh Atid sent a racist and anti-Mizrahi message to its Russian-speaking audience — the good friends, brothers and healers of Yesh Atid simply removed the message from the website. They deleted it. Why do you think they deleted it? What are they trying to hide? And how come they don’t know there are screenshots?”

Yesh Atid took a harder hit from the chairman of the Central Election Committee, Judge Yitzhak Amit, who ordered the party to remove posts containing photos of Lapid with IDF soldiers, a violation of campaign regulations, imposed a fine of 40,000 shekels.

United Torah Judaism and Shas were among the parties filing their intentions to run at the CEC on Thursday. UTJ’s two factions, Degel Hatorah and Agudas Yisrael, are running together, as in past years.

Meanwhile, the polls continue to indicate that the elections will again end in a deadlock, as opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-religious bloc struggles to achieve a majority of Knesset seats needed to form a government, and Lapid’s center-left group remains several short of that goal.

“Israel has been in political crisis mode since 2019. This has deep implications for policymaking across the board. The country is paying a price,” Israel Democracy Institute President Yohanan Plesner told Reuters on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, a slide into a sixth election campaign after the fifth is not inconceivable. It’s not science fiction,” Plesner said.