A police raid in Beit Shemesh turned up 200 fake Israeli ID cards stashed in two separate apartments. Eight people were arrested and police are checking to see whether the IDs were used for voting fraud.
Beit Shemesh, which has been the site of sectarian friction between Ultra-Orthodox and others, is in the midst of a hotly contested election that has seen those tensions flare.
Beit Shemesh residents arguing over politics in the lead-up to elections. (photo credit: Yaakov Lederman/Flash 90)
Reporter Mitch Ginsburg, spending the early part of today in the city, found that voters were concerned both with how the candidates — incumbent Moshe Abutbul and challenger Eli Cohen — would run the city, and who they had been told to vote for by powerful rabbis.
““The rebbe said to vote for [Abutbul],” a Gur hasid says. “That’s it. I don’t look to the right and I don’t look to the left. There are no issues that are important to me. What’s important to me is what he said.”
However, most English speakers want “a normal life, in a normal, clean city. No one here is looking for a religious war,” says Cohen.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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