Early and Often? (Article# 95) 11/6/08

As an old Chicago boy, I find politics and elections to be fascinating – especially trying to figure out the “spin” and what the real truth is. Although we have known that municipal elections would be coming in November, my lack of understanding of the Israeli electoral process, combined with my innate curiosity as an American, led me to follow the USA presidential elections much more closely than our local elections.

As I have said in the past, we really don’t like the current mayor. His prime talent is his policy of non-confrontation. He hates any publicity or focus upon Bet Shemesh as anything other than an idyllic town in the Jerusalem region. In order to keep things quiet, he has spent the past several years giving the chareidim of Bet Shemesh anything they wanted – especially once they start to riot.

As we have seen with other forms of terrorism, appeasing your opponent is the best way to encourage them to continue their belligerent behavior. As such, the violent element of the chareidim love nothing better than terrorizing their neighbors here, since they know that it is the most effective way to achieve their goals. (PLEASE NOTE: I am speaking of the very visible minority of the local chareidim who are actually violent and not about the invisible majority of chareidim who do nothing to stop them)

One of our neighbors across the street was spat upon several weeks ago while waiting at a bus stop. Speaking of bus stops, several of them within a few blocks of our house have been graffitied by our local chareidi “artist” who is also quite willing to share his thoughts with us on the sidewalk of our neighborhood as well. The list goes on and on.

Since our current mayor has not stood up to the hooliganism and violence, there has been a major push within our community (the Dati Leumi) to replace him. Additionally, the chareidi community (with its 40,000 Bet Shemesh residents) would love to replace him with a chareidi mayor.

Shalom Lerner, a Dati Leumi deputy mayor, born in Brazil but educated (through High School) in America before moving to Israel announced his candidacy several months ago. Moshe Abutbol, who is on the city council (I don’t think he is a Deputy Mayor – but may be wrong) representing the chareidi faction announced that he is running as well. And then the fun began.

The first visible signs of the campaign are just that, signs. Vinyl signs (there are no lawns here to put a USA style lawn sign on) began to appear on people’s fences and hanging out windows. Some of the signs have pictures of the candidate and some just have a tagline. Apparently, the amount of signs a candidate can display really means something here, it is a show of support and (or so we are told) can actually influence the voters.

On the English language newsgroup, emails began to fly. I support X candidate and here is why you need to support him as well. X candidate is the ONLY choice for Bet Shemesh. Since most of the Anglos want change but not a chareidi mayor, almost all of the English postings have been in support of our local candidate. Interestingly, many of them encourage their readers to go out and encourage our Israeli, Russian and Ethiopian friends to support Shalom Lerner as well.

I can’t speak for the rest of the Anglo community and I am sure that there are many people who are not like me, but I don’t have ANY Russian friends, I know ONE Ethiopian family (they daven with us in Rav Rosner’s shul) and I know maybe five or six Israeli families. All of these families have lived in Israel much, much longer than we have and if there were any “voting advice” to be dispensed between us, I would expect that they – knowing the system a lot more than I do – would have better advice for me than I would for them. They know how things work here and probably know who stands a better chance of making a difference for the city and a better life for my family. I don’t really have a clue.

As a voting novice here, I sent an email to the Lerner campaign asking them to kindly send an email with information for the new olim on how to vote and what we are voting for. I am not sure if it was them, but information began to appear. It wasn’t incredibly clear, but I did learn that we are voting for two different things. One vote is for Mayor of the City and the other vote is for City Council.

Similarly to Knesset elections, each party puts out a full list of candidates for City Council. Their list is long enough to cover all the seats on the council (in the unlikely event a single party carries 100% of the vote). After the election, each party is granted seats on the council based on their percentage representation in the City Council election. This explained why some of the parties were running in the elections but did not have a candidate for Mayor (I think there are 5 or 6 actual candidates for Mayor).

As the campaign moved forward, we began to see emails from the Lerner campaign. Each time a poll was conducted or something new happened, the local spin doctor was ready to explain how this was “awesome news for us”. They also warned us “not to believe the other campaigns” who were spreading news that Lerner had joined their ticket in a unity campaign, while at the same time informing us that all communities were welcome to sign on to support the Lerner campaign and be part of the winning team.


I had no idea what this meant, until a few days after the campaign announced that the Gerrer Chassidim had “signed up” with the Lerner campaign and would be “delivering” all their votes that would normally have gone to the chareidi candidate. Apparently responding to several inquiries about having chareidi association with the campaign, an email was sent out explaining that this faction of chareidim were anti violence and that their representative who would be serving as a deputy mayor in the new administration has been involved in such efforts.

“Deputy Mayor?” I thought, “Where did that come from?” Then I realized that it was a simple deal that was cut. They deliver their votes to help win the election and in return they get a seat at the table and a voice in running the city. Finally – something I can actually understand. The next day when I saw that another Dati Leumi party was “negotiating” with the campaign for their official endorsement, I understood that “negotiating” was simply a euphemism for “waiting to see what the best deal they can get is.”

With barely a week to go before the elections, the last ten days have been very busy. The election signs have multiplied. And the disturbances of the peace have also multiplied.

We are used to cars driving by with a megaphone on their roofs blaring some message. These messages are usually chareidi calls to either give tzedaka or attend some event (or perhaps funeral). So the addition of the “elect so and so” announcements isn’t a big deal. It is the “victory motorcade” that has become the supreme annoyance in our house.

Our house is the last house on a “dead end” street. However, on the other side of the fence at the end of the street (bordering our house) is a major street that connects Ramat Bet Shemesh to Bet Shemesh.

One night we were all at home when we suddenly heard a cacophony of car horns blaring. We assumed that there was some horrific accident or perhaps something blocking traffic and rushed to the windows to see what was going on. We saw what appeared to be a parade of cars all covered with campaign signs and driving down the street ever so slowly while honking their horns. Apparently, this type of “victory motorcade” is a regular part of Bet Shemesh politics and, like advertising, is viewed as a great way to publicize the candidate and inform the public that he will indeed prevail during elections.

I just think it is a nuisance and a major disturbance of my right to enjoy my evening in peace. To make matters worse, the parades have begun to take place after bedtime for our youngest boys and have woken them up. If I didn’t already have reason enough to not support the chareidi candidate, his waking up Moshe twice this week and the resulting aggravation he caused Goldie would suffice.

Thankfully, life continues to go on – despite the municipal elections. Last week Goldie and I renewed our “temporary” passports. This travel document is issued to new citizens (who are not eligible for a full passport until they have lived in Israel for at least one year). With the exception of Israeli Border Control, we travel on our US passports, so having a full Israeli passport is no great necessity for us.

We weren’t sure if we should bite the bullet and get the full passport or just renew the documents we had, until we heard the price. Getting a full passport costs over $100. Renewing our current document for another two years? FREE! Not only that, but they renewed them on the spot within 2 minutes of our getting to the service counter at the Ministry of the Interior (Misrad HaPnim).

A few days later we were back at their offices as we reached a major milestone in our Aliyah. Chaya, our oldest daughter, will be turning sixteen at the end of the month, the age at which Israeli youth (of which she is one) get their citizen’s ID card or Teudat Zehut. We got a special form in the mail and brought the form in with a couple of pictures of her (getting the pictures was a whole story in itself – she did not like the first set and paid for a second set of photos – after the hair and makeup were in place) to the Misrad HaPnim offices where they instantly issued her a (free) Teudat Zehut.

I wished her a Mazal Tov and got a funny look in response. Goldie of course cried when we told her that the card was issued (even I was a bit choked up as it was being processed). For us, as American born olim, these kinds of milestones signify another step of achievement for our family’s integration into Israel. For our kids, it is just something that you do when you turn 16; they feel much more a part of society here than we do – I think we will always feel as if we are different and in some ways we always will be.