Politics and Knesset
Labor Party central committee approves merger with the Gesher Party, putting to rest left-wing hopes that the new Democractic Camp would join forces with it. Parties have until 10 p.m. to ink a deal.
“There are no greater hypocrites than the Israeli left,” says Likud Knesset member Avi Dichter at a special conference in Tel Aviv focusing on Israel’s legal rights.
Hadash, the Islamic Movement’s UAL and Ahmad Tibi’s Ta’al Party announce they will run on a united list; Hadash leader Ayman Odeh says Balad will join in the coming days.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz will present a proposal to designate the transfer of embassies to Jerusalem as a “national, diplomatic and strategic objective of the highest order.”
The new mega-party of former premier Ehud Barak, Meretz and Labor Party defectors look to “set Israel back on correct path.”
Manchester council member Majid Dar was suspended after now-deleted anti-Semitic Facebook posts of his were exposed on Twitter.
The parties are to share votes in Sept. 17 election • Former Meretz leader Zandberg calls the agreement “a dramatic step to strengthen the left.”
Parties have only until Aug. 1 to submit their final candidate lists to the Central Elections Committee. Until then, everything is up in the air.
More than half disapprove of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of Brexit. And 48 percent polled as him as either fairly or poorly dealing with complaints of anti-Semitism.
Citing “erosion of the Foreign Ministry’s standing, aggressive budget cuts,” some 100 Israeli ambassadors, consuls and diplomats sign a petition calling for all overseas diplomatic missions to go on strike.
“To survive as long as he has in Israel’s raucous political system is no small feat. He has clearly left a deep imprint on the country and its future,” Michael Freund, the prime minister’s deputy communications director from 1996-99, told JNS.
Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency, said that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has crossed the line from criticism of Israel into anti-Semitism.
