Activists associated with the Eretz Chadasha party, about whom I’ve been posting over the past week, have just told me about a new and outrageous development in today’s election, for which polling began a few hours ago. Voters in communities including Holon, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Tiberias have entered their polling stations and when they seek to vote for Eretz Chadasha, the ballots for the Party are missing. When they question the voting officials they’re told that they were ordered by the Knesset elections committee to remove voting materials for the party because it officially withdrew from the race. I should add that I haven’t yet been able to corroborate these charges by independent journalists or eyewitnesses, but I’m working on securing proof of the activity.
I don’t know enough about Israeli election practices to know if it would even be permitted for a party to withdraw from an election on Election Day. At any rate, this is clearly a sham and a fraud. What’s worse is that the fraud has been perpetrated not by Nixon era dirty tricksters but by an official body of the Israeli Knesset. It’s an outrage. They know that Eretz Chadasha is surging in the polls. They fear if it enters the Knesset it will expose the dirty little secrets of both politicians and oligarchs. That the 99% will learn more than they should about the way the other 1% lives. Therefore, they will do all in their power to deprive the Party of its rightful place in the Israeli parliament.
I know that tens of thousands of Israelis are turning to this blog today because they country deprives them of the chance of hearing election surveys which may inform them of the surge I mentioned above. Now they will know of the shameful behavior of the Israeli election committee. I hope two things will happen: voters will be so enraged they will vote in even larger numbers for the Party; and that the committee will be shamed into stopping this abortion of democratic rights.
Israel, you thought you had a democracy. What do you have? An election run by the Israeli equivalent of Ceausescu or Pinochet. Shame.
I am not familiar at all with this situation, but to claim there is some sort of conspiracy to keep a fringe party
out of the elections doesn’t make sense The committee involved has representation from across the political
spectrum includng the Arab parties. I have never heard of the party, (I did not view or listen to the party
broadcasts but the regular news broadcasts or talk shows I heard never even mentioned them) but it is rare for a new party that few people have heard of to even pass the electoral threshold. The Da’am party which is supposed to be
socialist and mixed Arab/Jewish did get some mention, but it is unlikely to pass the threshold either.
Possibly they were disqualified for some reason, but in any event I don’t believe they would have passed the threshold
which is around 70,000 votes. The main reaonsons these Lefist fringe party don’t get enough is because of the endemic
interal splits the far Left has always suffered from.
Assuming the Knesset (or someone inside it) did fake the withdrawal of this party, one happy outcome will be the NEWS of this scandal and the retirement (like the jersey number of a retired soccer player) of the always false title “ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST”.
High time, in any case, as the Palestinians living as citizens of Israel suffer mildly and the Palestinians who should have been allowed to return after the ethnic cleansing of 1948 have suffered mightily for 64 years. The latter, in any case, should have been allowed to VOTE, and never were, never having been allowed to be present to cast their ballots as citizens of their country (not “state”).
As far as I know this is not true, checked with friends and family and they all seen the errors hadasha ballot in the calpi, also there would be much fuss about it in israel if something like this would’ve happened.
I don’t know where you got your info from but it’s sounds like another spin from Eldad yaniv, also funny is all the surveys results you posted while non of the other surveys in the last two month predicted eretz hadasha will get the 2 chairs, I guess we will have to wait until final results later today but this claim of yours that someone allegedly order to remove the ballots sounds extremely irrational when they doidnt even pass the marker to get 2 chairs inany survey.
Just not true. If the ballots are missing it means that they’re done – and in this case the voter can manually write on a provided white-blank ballot the letters of his/her wanted party.
Richard,
It’s disappointing that a progressive blogger like yourself, whose opinions I overall share, is endorsing a nationalist Zionist party such as Eretz Hadasha. Have a look at the manifesto of Eldad Yaniv’s original movement, “The National Left”: it is not far from Ehud Barak’s agenda. Having said that, you are right that this movement has been treated unfairly on many levels.
I wish to see one pole, just one that stands in line with statistical standards to support your claim that “They know that Eretz Chadasha is surging in the polls”. I think you’ve been mislead by wrong information.
Find yourself a good translator and read this article:
http://eishton.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/eretz2013/
Richard, with all due respect, you don’t know a thing about Eldad Yaniv. In short, 90% of all words coming out of his mouth are lies. You really need to do more research before posting every little nonsense he tells you. Don’t take my word for it, check for yourself, do some background check, see all the bullshit he was spreading during only these elections, maybe then you’ll understand better who you’re dealing with.
what a compleate load of horse manure. erets Chadasha’s notes was very much present when I voted.
as the elections have grown closer Erets chadasha faced a rightfull criticm, they have announced that they would withdraw if the poles showed conclusivly that they wouldnt gone in. and it became clear that they didn’t have any chance what so ever. NONE of the pols showed they were anywhere near the requiered minimum. and yet they chose not to withdraw, eventualy flushing about 25K votes down the drain.
but that doesn’t matter. the real story of these elections is the low vote in the arab population, just think what the political landscape would look like if only 10% more arab votes would have been cast. unbelievable.
My latest post presents documentary evidence: SMS messages confirming voters deprived of the right to vote for Eretz & a ballot display missing Eretz’s ballot. Chew on that for a while!
Eretz Chadasha’s ballots were in full effect at my polling station. I can send you a pic if you like.
I’m not claiming there was fraud in every polling place. But there was fraud in a large number. Further, when a competing party’s pollster predicts you will get 75,000 votes based on his survey results and you only get 25,000 that means 50,000 people were either persuaded to switch or were prevented from casting votes for you. Given the dirty tricks that went on I’d say it’s possible. Perhaps a bit of a stretch. But when it comes to dysfunction and corrupt practices in almost every aspect of Israel life (especially politics), I’d never say never.
The poll you cited actually got me quite excited. I watched all of Eretz Chadasha’s videos and thought to myself how interesting it would be to have such a voice in Knesset – with 4 seats no less! However, none of the other polls ever listed them as succeeding to such an extent and the final results correspond to those polls. I myself did a quick survey of my friends who voted in polling stations across the country (well, actually, mostly in Tel Aviv) and none of them reported missing Eretz Chadasha slips. That having been said, I am certain this is not the last we’ll hear of Eldad Yaniv and Merav David. Bibi has threatened to sue them over allegations contained in the video – if he does it’ll be the dumbest move ever, but we’ll see I guess!
You only saw polls taken more than 5 days before the election. You didn’t see any more recent polls. The more recent poll, as I wrote, prepared by the pollster for a competing party showed 2 seats. Raffi Smith, who some believe to be a less accurate pollster, predicted more. The final numbers reflect not agreement with the earlier polls you saw, but actual suppression of Eretz Chadasha’s voting bloc.