More problems for the Jewish Home party's image: The party's new leader received a tolerance prize from an Arab/Jewish organization this week.
The new Jewish Home party, formed for the purpose of uniting the various streams of religious-Zionism, has already come under attack from its more nationalist competitors, such as Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad and Baruch Marzel, for being "Kadima with a skullcap." This is largely because of newly-named party leader Daniel Hershkovitz's lukewarm political attitude towards the centrality of the Land of Israel, as well as the heavy influence of former National Religious Party leader Zevulun Orlev and others within the party leadership.
With poor timing, therefore, from the Jewish Home's standpoint, just three days ago Hershkovitz received a Tolerance award from the "Beit HaGefen Jewish Arab Center" in Haifa. Beit HaGefen is active on behalf of Arab-Jewish co-existence in Israel.
The Jewish Home's thirty-nine-member Public Committee, a body that has been appointed to compile the new party's list of candidates for Knesset for the upcoming elections, is, at this hour (Tuesday evening), heavily involved in debate over the list of candidates. The list is scheduled to be publicized on Wednesday evening.
The Looming Threat
Looming in the background is the threat by several prominent party members and potential candidates to break away and re-juvenate the National Union party, if the more pro-Land of Israel views associated with the National Union are not fairly represented on the list.
Specifically, the demand is that in slots 2-5, after party leader Hershkovitz, there must be at least three candidates who agree with the National Union's political positions. As one committee member phrased it, "they must be candidates who would refuse to be members of a government that agrees to negotiate away parts of the Land of Israel, even at the risk of losing the chance to appoint the Minister of Education." This, out of a sense that the concrete danger to Israel's very existence must take priority over the less specific goal of "improving education."
Jewish Education
The opposing stance within the Jewish Home is that because the party sought a common denominator to unite the entire religious-Zionist sector, and because it determined that this common denominator would be "Jewish Education," giving away parts of the Land cannot take precedence over the chance to influence the country's education.
One agitated Central Committee member told IsraelNationalNews, "We are trying to put together an agreed-upon list. If someone doesn't like it, there will apparently be a split, and then we'll become a tiny party relying on the good graces of the large parties. We are great at splitting up..."