- When the final results of Israel’s elections were published, after the “double envelopes” were counted, it became clear that the Ashkenazic-haredi United Torah Judaism (UTJ), which throughout most of the counting process had been expected to win eight Knesset seats, would only receive seven.
With the final votes counted, UTJ’s expected eighth seat went instead to its rival, the Russian secular Yisrael Beytenu party, whose leader – outgoing Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman – has called in the past to take haredim in wheelbarrows to the garbage dump.
The extra seat now brings Yisrael Beytenu up from five Knesset seats to six.
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With the loss of UTJ’s eighth seat, the Likud-led bloc dropped from 65 Knesset seats to 64.
According to UTJ, the party lost the seat due to a lack of just 990 votes. Unfortunately, even the vote-sharing agreement UTJ signed with Shas did not help keep the extra seat within the haredi parties.
- “This small and painful shortage again underlines and shows, black on white, how great and critical the statements and cries of the Torah sages are, when they say, ‘Every vote counts,'” sources in the party said.
“The fact that people who see themselves as part of the haredi community but who chose to stay home on election day and be problematically complacent, or alternatively who did not vote for haredi parties due to various reasons and justifications, is painful and inconceivable.”
- “Is it not clear that the ones who represent the built-in interests of the haredi Jew in the land of Israel is the UTJ party? These statements are correct both with regards to the organizational frameworks of the haredi Jew, and with regards to the physical needs of the haredi family. Where is the logic in deviating from the instructions of the Torah sages and the righteous people, and acting differently?”
Source: Arutz Sheva
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