Amid Likud primaries, minister charges ‘leftist’ faction trying to affect vote

Culture Minister Miri Regev attacks members of an internal Likud faction that aims to challenge party doctrine, accusing them of “occupying south Tel Aviv” in their efforts to persuade primary voters to cast ballots for their candidates in today’s primaries.

“After the Sudanese conquered south Tel Aviv, now the New Likudniks are occupying south Tel Aviv,” Regev tells journalists outside the city’s central polling station at the Tel Aviv Convention Center.

She has previously called Sudanese asylum-seekers in Tel Aviv “a cancer in our body.”

Regev says that the New Likud group, which has openly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his alleged corruption, “represents the left and is trying to harm and change the DNA of our party. We will beat them and it will happen if everyone come out to vote and influence [the results].”

The New Likud was founded in 2011 by leaders of the social justice protests, which that summer saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets to demand government action on behalf of the middle class. The group’s stated agenda is to push what it says are middle-class interests from within Likud. It takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But many Likud members have accused members of the group of being undercover leftists trying to influence the party from within.

New Likud claims it has 8,000 members who are eligible to vote in the primaries. The Likud party has some 119,000 members, in all.

— Raoul Wootliff