Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett on Tuesday suspended his party’s election campaign in Jerusalem, over a second anti-Haredi ad which sparked a new storm. Nevertheless, according to the news website Kipa, the Hagit Moshe campaign for the Jerusalem city council continues, with its original team.
The fiasco began on Monday, when the Jerusalem municipal campaign of Habayit Hayehudi, headed by city councilwoman Hagit Moshe, came out swinging with a new, borderline anti-Semitic campaign ad. The ad showed mayoral candidates Ze’ev Elkin, Moshe Leon and Ofer Berkowitz as Haredim in hats and sidelocks. The message was: no matter which candidate wins the mayoral election, only a strong contingency of Habayit Hayehudi in the city council would prevent them from surrendering to Haredi pressure to turn Jerusalem into another Bnei Brak.
On Tuesday, exhibiting the maturity and wisdom of a toddler who just put his hand in the oven, was burned and decided to put his hand in the toaster instead, the Moshe campaign put up a new ad, with the same three candidates, except this time without the Haredi photoshop treatment.
The caption above read: “With this picture, it’s OK?” and the text below the three heads repeated the original, disturbingly bigoted message: “Only a winning Habayit Hayehudi will block the influence of the Haredim.”
If you don’t get what’s the problem here, try substituting “Arabs” or “Blacks” for Haredim.
City Councilman Aryeh King, running on the United slate that’s very close ideologically to Habayit Hayehudi, responded to the sensitivity failures of the Moshe campaign, saying, “As we have warned, the continued incitement campaign run by Habayit Hayehudi in Jerusalem proves that [the initial ad] was not a mistake, but a deliberate incitement aimed at dividing the residents of Jerusalem.”
“Habayit Hayehudi and the [faction] National Union cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand and shirk responsibility,” King continued. “We call on Naftali Bennett to show Hagit Moshe the door out immediately.”
King also called on the National Union faction MKs to join his campaign, saying: “Uri Ariel and Bezalel Smotrich, you just received additional proof that Hagit Moshe simply does not give a hoot about you. If that’s the way she behaves on the campaign, just imagine how she would behave after you hand her the council seat on a silver platter. … It is still not too late, and we urge you to join the Torah National Front of the United slate.”
