Meretz campaign focuses on party’s survival

With a dire showing in polls and after the Joint (Arab) List refused to sign a vote-sharing agreement due to its being “overly Zionist,” Meretz heads into the last week of the election campaign with a message stressing its sheer survival is in jeopardy.

Online ads run the message “We must not lose Meretz – it depends on you!” alternating with “One cannot live in a merciless country.”

On its website, the party says voters “must not buy into the spin of Zionist Union according to which replacing the government depends on the number of Knesset seats of the largest party,” but rather “on the number of seats of the parties in the larger bloc.”

Meretz has been bleeding votes to Zionist Union, while some of its radical left electorate  – even Jewish Israelis – have not abandoned Hadash following the unification of Arab parties and intend to vote for the Joint (Arab) List.