Amid boos and infighting, Labor pushes off primary
Opposition party’s central committee votes with embattled leader Isaac Herzog to delay leadership race till July 2017
Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog is scrambling to keep his political career afloat after a failed bid earlier this year to take his center-left party into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
The move sparked calls for his ouster, and efforts by him to delay the upcoming party primary from December 2016 to July 2017.
In a stormy gathering Sunday in Tel Aviv of some 1,500 members of Labor’s central committee, the party’s key decision-making body voted with Herzog by a majority of 750 to 402.
The voting began after a speech by Herzog that was punctuated by boos and his own shouts back at the crowd.
To cries of “Boujie go home” — Herzog’s nickname from childhood — from some 200 protesters, Herzog replied, “You can make as much noise as you want. It won’t help. I’ve already been called a dog and it didn’t help you. I’m not moving. I’m staying here.”
His main challenger for Labor leader, MK Shelly Yachimovich, called him a “poodle” earlier this year for his efforts to join the Netanyahu-led coalition.
Herzog’s supporters in the audience offered their own shouts of “Shelly go home” in response.
According to Yachimovich, Sunday’s shouting reflected real anger in the party’s rank and file.
“I entered in the midst of an uproar and I was shocked by what was happening in the hall,” Yachimovich told Channel 2. “It was an expression of the people’s anger. I understood that Herzog threatened to throw out those who booed him. Anyone who wants to be a leader shouldn’t be a crybaby.”
After his speech was interrupted multiple times, Herzog instructed the party’s secretary-general, MK Hilik Bar, to throw the protesters out of the hall and slammed them as “anti-democratic” for not allowing him to speak.
Bar took to the podium and slammed the protesters, repeatedly shouting, “Shame on you!” He charged that protesters were taking to the party’s Whatsapp groups and posting photos comparing Herzog to Turkish and Russian strongmen Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.
Some anti-Herzog activists held signs showing Netanyahu’s face, comparing Herzog with his erstwhile potential political ally.
Going into the vote Sunday, Herzog, a longtime coalition-builder in the main opposition party, appeared to have the upper hand among committee members.
His key opponents, MKs Yachimovich, Omer Barlev and Erel Margalit, decided not to challenge Herzog from the podium themselves.
Herzog accused Yachimovich and Margalit of causing harm to the party by “creating an image of a dysfunctional party.”
“I had intended to bring any unity [government] agreement [with Likud] to this committee,” he assured the audience.
Yachimovich said Herzog and Bar’s threats to kick out committee members “are disgraceful. The weeping over the boos he earned are the opposite of leadership.”
