Raphael Fails in Party Election

Yitzhak Raphael, the former Minister of Religious Affairs, failed to win a place in the National Religious Party’s election list in yesterday’s balloting by the NRP’s 201-member General Council. He conceded that this might mean the end of his political career. Dr. Yosef Burg, former Minister of Interior, heads the list, followed by former Welfare Minister Zevulun Hammer and MK Aaron Abu Hatzira.

Raphael’s defeat was especially bitter for him because two of his former proteges made the list. One of them,Pinhas Schoenmann, the only Knesset incumbent of the Raphael faction, placed 11th which means he may not be re-elected unless the NRP does better in the May 17 elections than it did in the last Knesset elections. The NRP has 10 seats in the present Knesset.

DISAPPOINTMENT WITH DESH KNESSET LIST

Meanwhile, representatives of the Oriental community and new development towns who had cast their lot with Prof. Yigal Yadin’s Democratic Movement for Change (DESH) were bitterly disappointed with the results of the movement’s balloting last week to select its Knesset list for the May 17 elections.

Some 24,700 DESH members participated in what was billed as the first primary in Israel’s history–77 percent of those eligible to vote. But candidates of the disaffected so-called “second world” in Israeli society placed in the bottom half of the 30-member list and some, such as the Zionist Panthers, got no representation at all.

Predictably, the academicians, industrialists, and candidates with the most political experience headed the list. Yadin won first place, followed by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, leader of the Shinui (Change) movement, Meir Amit, former head of Histadrut’s giant Koor Industries, who recently quit the Labor Party and veteran politician Shmuel Tamir, former leader of the Free Center Party.

A ‘PURELY ASHKENAZIC MOVEMENT’

The Druze candidates associated with Tamir also did fairly well, with the support of their large families. Former Likud MK Dr. Binyamin Halevy placed in the first half of the list, apparently because of his reputation as a former Justice of the Supreme Court. Shmuel Toledano, former advisor on Arab affairs to Premier Yitzhak Rabin, benefited from the votes of many of the 4000 Arab members of DESH.

But candidates of Odded, a group of Oriental Jews who are seeking to bridge the social gap, did poorly. Black Panther leader Shalom Cohen said after the results were known that DESH is a “purely Ashkenazic movement.”

The voters also selected a 300-member National Council. Yadin pointed out later that 20 percent of the Council came from new develop- ment towns. He did not rule out the possibility of “amending” the election results to advance Oriental candidates but said it was up to the National Council to decide. He acknowledged that one of DESH’s main concerns was to cure Israel’s social inequities. Nevertheless, the results of the DESH “primaries” indicated that the movement would take a somewhat more conservative approach in the election campaign.