Yitzhak Herzog, Tzipi Livni
Yitzhak Herzog, Tzipi LivniTomer Neuberg/Flash 90

Has the Labor Party hired American help to win the upcoming Knesset elections?

A resident of the town of Hashmonaim in central Israel believes so, after he got an interesting phone call from a polling site that asked him whether or not he would vote for Labor – with the questions posed in English, and the phone number of the call traced back to the United States. 

The resident told Arutz Sheva that he got the call Wednesday morning, with an automated voice posing questions that he was asked to answer by pressing buttons on his phone for yes, know, don't know, etc.

“The questions were asked in Hebrew, but if I pressed the wrong button or waited too long, a voice would come on in English asking for me to respond again, which I thought was strange,” the resident said. “The questions concerned a range of issues, including how I voted in the last elections, what I thought about current parties, etc.

“However, one party – Labor – appeared to get more attention than the others in the poll, and the last question asked was if there was a chance – even a small one – that I would vote for Labor, which led me to believe that the poll was sponsored by Labor,” the resident added.

After the conversation, the Israeli checked the phone number that the conversation originated from – and discovered that it was dialed from the US, specifically from Michigan. “It makes sense, because the Americans have made it clear that they would prefer to see Labor running Israel instead of Likud.”

The Labor Party could not be reached for comment on the matter.