Haredi activists ramp up Likud recruitment in bid to influence ruling party from within
Ultra-Orthodox activists are ramping up the recruitment of Haredim to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud ahead of the party’s upcoming primaries, part of a years-long concerted effort to build political power within the ruling party and influence its policies, according to a Channel 12 report.
The report estimates that 7,000 of Likud’s roughly 140,000 members are Haredi, with nearly all of the major Hasidic groups now represented within the party.
Haredi public relations strategist and Likud operative Yossi Rosenbaum, who has been recruiting members to the party since 2004, tells Channel 12 that his bloc now numbers in the “thousands” and that he can bring several thousand voters to the polls.
The trend is driven partly by dissatisfaction with traditional Haredi political representatives, primarily United Torah Judaism but also Shas, and a belief that membership in the ruling party offers a more effective means of advancing their interests.
Even figures formally affiliated with the Haredi parties are participating in the effort, including an unnamed Bnei Brak city councilman representing Agudat Yisrael, a UTJ faction, who also runs an organized bloc of Likud voters.
Likud politicians, in turn, are increasingly courting the Haredi public, with Netanyahu, ministers including Israel Katz, Yariv Levin, Gideon Sa’ar, Shlomo Karhi and lawmakers David Bitan, Boaz Bismuth, Hanoch Milwidzky, Moshe Saada among others regularly attending Haredi events as they campaign for support ahead of next week’s primaries.
The upcoming race is expected to be unusually tight, with the party projected to drop to 23 seats and Netanyahu granted an unprecedented eight slots on the slate for handpicked candidates, significantly reducing the number of realistic spots available to primary contenders. As a result, a bloc of several thousand Haredi voters could prove decisive.