Though its final list of Knesset candidates will not be publicized until Wednesday evening, the Jewish Home party has announced that popular writer and radio talk show host Uri Orbach will be in the top five.
This is the third major decision made by the party’s 39-member Public Council, and like the others, this too is a controversial one. The council first decided to do away with primaries for the party leader, preferring to choose the leader itself. This aroused the ire of former National Union members, who felt that former NRP leader MK Zevulun Orlev would benefit at the expense of MK Uri Ariel, who was likely to win in popular primaries.
The second decision was to choose heretofore-unknown Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkovitz as the party leader, despite his lack of previous political experience. Hershkovitz then proceeded to say that the party MKs would be free to vote as they wish on Land of Israel matters, and later accepted a prize from a Jewish-Arab co-existence organization – thus fanning the flames of National Union distrust.
This last decision, to name Uri Orbach one of the party’s top five MK candidates, has also aroused objections. Though he is known as a skilled apologist for the right-wing camp, he has been known to say that the road-blockings during the Disengagement protests were a “calamity,” that the extreme right-wing is comprised of psychopaths, and that HaTzofeh newspaper was too right-wing. Some also say that Orbach has not proven himself a man of action, but only one of words.
Orbach was a founder and first editor of the popular religious children’s magazine Otiyot. He also was among the founders of the religious Radio Kol Chai station, but left when the decision was made not to play songs sung by women.
He was also a founding member of Israel's short-lived "Judaism" TV channel - Techelet (Hebrew for azure). Founded in April 2003 by Shlomo Ben-Tzvi , Orbach was its first programming director, but left less than a year later because of what Orbach termed the station’s “tilt towards the [secular] Tel Aviv genre.”
Orbach, until today, was a leading member of the right-left radio debate show on Army Radio, providing a humorous and skilled presentation of religious and right-leaning views. He also writes a weekly column for Yediot Acharonot.
Orbach joins a growing list of journalists who have entered politics in recent months and years. These include Shelly Yechimovitch and the late Tommy Lapid in previous years, and Daniel Ben-Simon, Nitzan Horowitz and Gideon Reicher in time for the upcoming elections. In addition, former MK-turned-TV personality Ilan Gil’on is returning to the Knesset, having been chosen for the 2nd slot on the Meretz list.
The Jewish Home’s Public Council has narrowed down the list of 84 candidates to fewer than 40, largely based on the results of the internet votes of some 15,000 people. Among the names under consideration are the five incumbent MKs (Elon, Ariel, Slomiansky, Orlev and Hendel), Rabbi Hillel Horowitz, Orit Strook, Avi Rath, Gila Finkelstein, Yehudit Shilat, Alon Davidi, Danny Dayan, Adi Mintz, Elchanan Glatt, Lior Kalfa, Miro Dayan, Sar-Shalom Jerbi, Rachel Silvetzky, Tzachi Fenton, and Rabbi Rachamim Nisimi.