New Meretz leader consulted with adviser behind fierce anti-left campaigns
Apparently caught in a lie after denying ties to ex-Jewish Home strategist Moshe Klughaft, Tamar Zandberg says he initiated contact, gave advice in unofficial capacity
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The newly elected leader of the left-wing Meretz party consulted with a political adviser who previously worked with the right-wing Jewish Home party and was behind combative campaigns against left-wing NGOs and activists.
Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg appeared to be caught in a lie on Saturday night, after she repeatedly denied to reporters last week that she had worked with strategist Moshe Klughaft, who was also the architect of campaigns deriding the New Israel Fund as a subversive force.
Klughaft in an interview with Hadashot news aired Saturday, however, confirmed he had worked with Zandberg on her recent bid for the party leadership.
In a statement on Saturday night, the Meretz party leader conceded Klughaft had offered advice, but said he was not part of her campaign in any official capacity.
“During the campaign, there were a number of talented people who offered me advice from their experience,” she said. “One of them was Moshe Klughaft, who initiated the meeting to give me tips as part of his experience in the generational revolution in the Jewish Home party. Contrary to what was said in the article, Klughaft was never employed by the campaign or worked for it.”
Klughaft was behind a 2016 campaign “outing” Israeli artists as “foreign agent moles” over their ties with left-wing groups, an initiative he told Hadashot news he regretted. He has been credited with significantly boosting the political profiles of Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked over the past decade.
Across the political aisle, he also worked with former Zionist Union MK Erel Margalit on his failed Labor leadership bid, highlighting the entrepreneur’s brash style in a series of campaign videos. One widely mocked clip, which saw him yell “Give me back my state, dammit!” earned a parody on “Eretz Nehederet,” Israel’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Zandberg’s involvement with Klughaft was slammed by Zionist Union leader Avi Gabbay on Saturday night, who branded the adviser a “propagandist who is responsible for the polarization of political discourse, [taking it] to a dangerous place.”
“If this is the new Meretz, it would be better if it didn’t pass the electoral threshold,” he said.
Zandberg, earlier on Saturday, said she was disappointed by the conduct of the Labor party under the leadership of Gabbay, “zigzagging and apologizing for its positions and as a result collapsing politically.”
She said Meretz “is certainly a better candidate to lead the left-wing bloc due to its ideological clarity and its loyalty to its values.”
Zandberg became the new head of Meretz Thursday night after winning a vast majority in its first-ever leadership primary, delivering a resounding victory over rival Avi Buskila, a former head of the Peace Now anti-settlement group. Zandberg won 71 percent of the votes cast compared to 28% for Buskila. Accepting victory in front of a crowd of party loyalists at its headquarters in Tel Aviv, the 41-year-old Zandberg, who has been an MK for Meretz since 2013 and a party activist for many years, said she planned to lead the Israeli left to better days.
Raoul Wootliff, Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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