From the Liveblog of
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Labor MKs Lazimi, Kariv endorse Golan for party leadership ahead of primaries
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Labor MKs Gilad Kariv and Naama Lazimi endorse former Meretz MK Yair Golan ahead of the Labor party’s upcoming May 28 primary election.
“Together we will build the common home of the Zionist left,” Kariv, who was widely considered a candidate for leadership of the party, says in a joint video address with Golan and Lazimi.
“The responsibility for change and hope is on us,” says Lazimi, declaring “this is our time, join us.”
Thanking the two Labor lawmakers, Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff who served as deputy economy minister during the short-lived, multi-party coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, pledges “to create a large and wide movement.”
Over the past several months, Golan has been widely lauded as a national hero for his efforts to rescue partygoers fleeing the Hamas-led massacre at the Supernova Music Festival on October 7.
Announcing his candidacy late last month, Golan stated that he intended to unify the country’s left-wing groups.
Labor leader Merav Michaeli’s decision not to join forces with Meretz ahead of the last election contributed to the latter party’s failure to enter the Knesset, to the detriment of the bloc of parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Once a dominant force in Israeli politics, Labor currently only has four seats in the Knesset and several recent polls show the party failing to cross the electoral threshold.
However, none of the polls ran the scenario of a combined Labor-Meretz slate, which could potentially win more seats than Meretz’s projected four if the party were to run alone.
