Renegade Labor member skips party’s Rabin memorial

Party no. 3 Merav Michaeli, who has refused to join the government under Netanyahu, will hold her own memorial event Wednesday

By ToI Staff 2 November 2020, 4:14 pm

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Labor MK Merav Michaeli (Hadas Parush/Flash90).

Labor no. 3 Merav Michaeli, a vehement critic of the unity government, was noticeably absent from a Sunday Labor event commemorating the 25-year anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, which included party notables and a foreign diplomat.

The Labor memorial event for Rabin, a head of the Labor party who was assassinated by a Jewish right-wing extremist in November 1995, saw speeches from Labor party chairman Economy Minister Amir Peretz, Labor and Welfare Minister Itzik Shmuli, Labor Secretary-General Eran Hermoni, and a pre-recorded speech from the UK’s Tony Blair.

Michaeli is instead planning to hold a separate memorial service on Wednesday with Rabin’s granddaughter and his former finance minister, Avraham Shochat.

In April, the Labor party’s central committee voted in favor of joining the unity government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz, upending repeated campaign promises to never serve under a prime minister facing a criminal indictment.

Labor MKs Itzik Shmuli (L) and Amir Peretz at the party’s headquarters in Tel Aviv on February 13, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Michaeli, 53, rejected sitting in a coalition under Netanyahu, making her a de facto opposition member within her own party, and within the coalition.

Michaeli at the time accused Peretz and Shmuli of perpetrating the “worst act of political theft, stealing the votes of the Israelis who elected them.”