In unusual cross-party move, far-right minister’s aide says he recruited 324 Likud members

A senior aide to Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party says he convinced hundreds of people, including members of the ultra-Orthodox community, to sign up as members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party ahead of its primary election today.

The effort by Israel Diskind, Eliyahu’s spokesman, is an unusual case of a prominent figure affiliated with one party becoming involved in another party’s primary election, in a bid to influence the shape of the next government. In Diskind’s case, he hopes the voters he registered support candidates who demand more safety precautions at an annual Jewish pilgrimage that was the site of a disaster in 2021.

Speaking to The Times of Israel outside a polling place during the Likud party primary in Beit Shemesh, Diskind says that he convinced 324 people to join Likud, even though he is aware that not all of them will vote for the party on election day.

Diskind was motivated because in 2021, a crowd crush killed 45 ultra-Orthodox men and boys, including Diskind’s brother, and injured over 100, as they traversed a slippery walkway at the annual Lag B’Omer pilgrimage in Meron, in Israel’s deadliest peacetime civilian disaster to date. A state commission of inquiry blamed a number of senior officials, including Netanyahu, for the incident and changes have been made as to how to pilgrimage is run.

Diskind was formerly a spokesman for the bereaved families and has been active regarding the issue.

He believes more fixes are necessary and blamed ultra-Orthodox lawmakers for failing their constituents and “not taking care” of the issue, stressing that he is not trying to push Likud to violate core principles of the political right such as advocating for West Bank settlements, and is not trying to send “a Trojan horse inside Likud.”

Elaborating in a subsequent message, Diskind states that he “prefers not to be a Likud member, but rather to influence it.”

“I started registering members 3 years ago when I realized from within the government how the Likud game works, and how necessary it is to build an influential power base in Likud in order to succeed in driving actions like the Meron repairs and building the memorial at the disaster site,” he writes.

“I have brought in quite a few people who managed to complete the qualifying period, and there are others who will only be able to vote [in primaries] later on,” he adds.