Elections committee okays ex-general’s run on Labor list

10 March 2019, 5:45 pm

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The Central Elections Committee approves the candidacy of Tal Russo, a former IDF general running on the Labor Party slate in the April elections.

Tal Russo, a retired major general and former head of the army’s Southern Command, was tapped in mid-February by Labor head Avi Gabbay to fill the number two slot on the party’s slate.

But questions were raised about the legality of Russo’s candidacy because it comes two years after he left military service — less than the three years required by Israel’s “cooling off” law for former senior military officers.

The committee accepted Russo’s argument that he officially resigned from the IDF in 2013, but stayed on until 2017 on a voluntarily basis as a reservist.