Daniel Tauber
Daniel TauberHezki Ezra

Likud Anglos director Daniel Tauber voted against the merger agreement between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu at the Likud Central Committee meeting Tuesday, saying he feared that the joint list would weaken Likud’s identity. In addition, he said, it would undermine the ability of voters to select their representatives in Knesset.

“The Likud must forge its own path, present its principles and platform to the public, and itself become the large right-of-center party,” Tauber said, referring to Lieberman's statement last week that the move would help bring back large parties and stability to the Israeli political system.

Tauber explained that the joint list also “harms the Likud’s internal democratic process. Primaries are the only time citizens may vote for actual Knesset members.” By agreeing to the joint-list, the Likud is, in effect, “giving away spots on its list – spots to which democratically chosen candidates were elected – and replacing them with candidates chosen in a non-democratic process.”

Tauber is a member of the Central Committee where he ranked 6th out of over 300 candidates from the Jerusalem region in elections last January.

While he grew up in the United States and made aliyah only 3 years ago, Tauber’s grandfather served as personal aide to Zionist visionary Ze’ev Jabotinsky whose Revisionist-Zionist movement was the precursor to the modern Likud movement. Tauber was thus raised not only in a religious-Zionist setting but also steeped in the history and political-philosophy of the Likud and its Revisionist Zionist philosophy.

Despite his misgivings, Tauber said that he would work to ensure the joint list receives as many mandates as possible.

“Now that the vote has gone through, of course, I will support the united list for the benefit of the Likud and the State of Israel, as I am sure will others who had misgivings,” he said.