MK Orly Levy-Abekasis on Tuesday announced she is launching a new political party, and declared: “I recommend to other party leaders to not be afraid of the elections – and start being afraid of this new party.”
MK Levy-Abekasis currently serves as a lawmaker without a faction, having resigned from Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party in 2016, blaming her departure on Liberman’s disinterest in social welfare.
“These issues must be at the center of a new movement that will not polarize the right and the left, nor polarize the various ethnic communities – as do so many politicians.”
She added that the public “votes for people who know the situation and are working to fix it.”
Orly Levy-Abekasis, 45, is the daughter of former Likud Minister and kingmaker David Levy, who championed the downtrodden Jews from Arab countries. She is married, the mother of four, and lives in Kibbutz Mesilot in the Beit She’an Valley, northern Israel.
Despite working without support from a party, she attends meetings of the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, and the Finance Committee.
Commenting on the country’s current corruption scandals involving a senior Knesset official, a government minister and a prime minister, Levy-Abekasis said on Tuesday, at the Sderot Conference for Society of Sapir College in Netanya, “Did you notice that they are all everyone’s friends? And the capitalists are friendly to all those alternatives the media are offering us. Even people who talked about a different kind of politics eventually turn out to have some problems in terms of how straight is their ruler.”
“I do not have wealthy friends, I’ve never had any, and I have no intention of getting any,” she said, suggesting that “if an elected official is forced to declare his conflict of interest, he is not worthy of being an elected official.”
Last January, Walla reported that Levy-Abekasis was in contact with a group calling itself “For Israel,” which includes members such as Adina Bar Shalom, daughter of the late Rav Ovadia Yosef, Yeruham Mayor Michael Biton, retired Maj. Gen. Gideon Sheffer, and entrepreneur Orna Angel.