Israeli Opposition Leader Courts the Religious Vote

On a brilliant Monday morning during the Passover holiday, Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu moved through a sea of religious Jews toward the Western Wall, schmoozing with well-wishers and shaking hands as much as anyone can behind a press of photographers and bodyguards.

Netanyahu, the Likud Party candidate for prime minister, wore a plain black skullcap to hear the Birkat Cohenim (Priestly Blessing), said three times a year, and stood solemnly as verses from the Book of Isaiah were read over a loudspeaker. The religious crowd did not notice that Netanyahu seemed to know few of the words. It was enough that he was there.

“This means he is close to the Jewish tradition,” said Eli Neria, an observant Jew wrapped in a prayer shawl and holding his son overhead to see the candidate. “He is keeping much closer to tradition than people from [the] Labor [Party].”

That was precisely the point Netanyahu hoped to make at the wall of the Jewish Second Temple less than two months before the May 29 national elections. He is courting the religious vote, which may be decisive since he is in a dead heat in his race against Prime Minister Shimon Peres of the Labor Party.

In fact, neither candidate is particularly religious. And both are wearing out the carpet to rabbis’ front doors in the ritual quest for a campaign blessing from those who will tell more than 100,000 Orthodox voters how to cast their ballots.

Peres did not attend the Passover prayer, and Netanyahu was all smiles as he worked the Old City crowd.

“He’s making political points,” tour guide David Solomon said between prayers. “Most people here will vote for him.”

Like most of the religious, Netanyahu opposes the Labor government’s agreement with the Palestinians that trades West Bank land for peace. Religious Jews call the area by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria and view the land as their birthright. Likud promises them further expansion of Jewish settlements there, while Labor has halted construction and, under the peace agreement, pulled Israeli troops out of Arab cities and villages.

The next government is to conduct final negotiations with the Palestinians over the fate of Jewish settlements, control of Jerusalem and the borders and status of Palestinian-ruled territory. Netanyahu has tried to scare voters by saying that Peres would redivide the holy city of Jerusalem. Israel captured the eastern half, including the Old City, in the 1967 Mideast War.

More important for Netanyahu, however, may be the fact that the Orthodox haredim, as the men in black robes and hats are called, simply tend to view the left-leaning Labor Party as less sympathetic to the traditional Jewish world.

“They view the left as secular people who desecrate the Sabbath,” said Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. “It is almost certain that they will vote for Netanyahu.”

Peres appeared to come to that conclusion in February when, in an unusual moment of self-doubt, he told editors of the Orthodox newspaper Hamodia: “I have given up almost all hope of winning ultra-Orthodox support in the elections for prime minister. I don’t know why I deserve this, but it is the reality.”

Last week, in a new bout of optimism, Peres gave the religious vote another shot, meeting with the patriarch of the Shas religious party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to try to get him to withhold support from Netanyahu.

Still aware that the religious are unlikely to embrace him, Peres reportedly asked the pro-peace rabbi to urge his followers to abstain in the nation’s first direct vote for prime minister, while still supporting the Shas party for the Knesset, or parliament.

Three religious parties--Shas, the National Religious Party and United Torah--hold 16 seats in the 120-member Knesset. They currently sit with Likud in the opposition.

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After meeting with Peres, Yosef reportedly told party leaders that he would leave the decision on whom to vote for in the prime minister’s race to individuals--effectively clearing the way for his followers to cast ballots for Netanyahu.

But Netanyahu was not taking any chances. Late Monday night, he and an entourage of Likud leaders were scheduled to have their own meeting with the rabbi to make their case.

“I believe in the good judgment of the rabbis and the public,” Netanyahu told Israeli television at the Western Wall. “And I intend to become the prime minister of the general public, regardless of whether they are wearing a skullcap or they are secular. And that is what I will tell Rabbi Yosef.”

Asked if he thought the Priestly Blessing would help his election bid, a smiling Netanyahu said, “Sure it will help me.”