MK and former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, chairman of the Telem party, announced Monday afternoon that he is dropping out of the Knesset race, and that Telem will not take part in the upcoming election.
Yaalon, who ran in the three previous elections as part of the joint Blue and White ticket, broke away from Yesh Atid, with which Telem had remained aligned for most of 2020.
“I believed that a separate run of myself and Telem, we would be able to increase the strength of the ‘change bloc’,” Yaalon said Monday. “That belief turned out to be incorrect.”
“Given the current political circumstances, the struggle for change obliges me and Telem to not run in this coming election.”
Yaalon called on Israeli voters to “open your eyes and make sure that you don’t give your vote to someone who will surrender the hope of change in order to sit [in a government] under the shadow of a person under criminal indictment. Give your votes to leadership that is free from suspicion.”