Last week, Israel held mayoral elections nationwide. In Jerusalem there were four candidates: Meir Porush, Nir Barkat, Arkaday Gaydamak and some man who wanted to legalise weed whose name I have forgotten. If we ignore the “Aleh Yarok” (The legalise Weed party) candidate who only registered two weeks before the elections because he perceived Nir Barkat to be fraternising with the religious community, we can say that there were three serious contenders to be Mayor of Jerusalem.
The most well known was Arcadi Gaydamak, a millionaire Russian expatriate who made his fortune in arms in somewhat shady circumstances and has now made his home in Jerusalem. He has invested considerable money in Jerusalem over the past few years and has underwritten a good many worthwhile causes such as saving Bikur Cholim hospital from bankruptcy and sending residents of Sderot to Eilat for a weekend break to escape from the rockets from Gaza. I personally wondered for a long time why he was putting such a lot of money into Israel and Jerusalem when he seemed to be disinterested in politics up until now, and for a man with no obviously strong religious connection, why it is that he cares about Jerusalem so much. I can’t say what other residents of Jerusalem think about him, but I have always wondered what his true intents were.
Gaydamak was surely hoping for a better response from the Jewish residents of Jerusalem, but despite his philanthropic work, Gaydamak is viewed as something of an enigma in Israel – he has undeniably donated enormous amounts of money to a variety of Israeli causes but his politics have not been known until fairly recently. I remember when he bought Bikur Cholim hospital a few years ago that he ran a campaign trumpeting “Gaydamak for Jerusalem,” and my reaction to the campaign was, “And what do you want?” I have always wondered what his true intents were, and it appears that I was not alone, others have also been wary of him. He has seemed to be an unworthy philanthropist in the eyes of many – a man willing to give lots of money for populist causes as a mask for an ulterior motive.
If we examine the electorate, we find why Gaydamak only garnered 0.5% of the vote. We can assume that he would have gravitated to the secular vote, being an irreligious man, but he has said that "Jerusalem should always be under the Jewish administration," not a quote that sits well with the average liberal-minded, secular Israeli. Next up we have the religious vote; a large percentage of Jerusalem’s population are religious Jews, but personally I can’t understand how could he have hoped to be elected by such a patriotic demographic when he can barely speak basic Hebrew. Gaydamak’s publicity flyers even admitted as much; his campaign slogan was “Lo m’daber – Oseh!” which translates as, “Don’t speak – do!” His flyers would later be cynically hijacked when a scrawled “Ivrit” was appended to many flyers, changing the meaning to “Doesn’t speak Ivrit.” True, Gaydamak owns and has invested heavily in the capital’s most successful football team – Beitar Jerusalem, the team of choice for nationalistic Jews in and around Jerusalem, but his floundering campaign suffered a further blow as even this counted against him when Beitar lost a big match the weekend before the vote, when he was hoping that a win would help swing votes in his favour. This is only speculation, but I have my suspicions that one of the reasons he bought Beitar in the first place was to some extent a ploy in order to buy the hearts of a large percentage of the Jerusalem electorate.
Also worthy of note was that he was hoping to secure the Arab vote, but the residents of East Jerusalem largely stayed away from the elections after being told by their leaders that to vote would be to recognize the Israeli occupation. I cannot imagine that those few who did vote would have found it easy to vote for a man who owns Beitar, a club whose fans regularly chant anti-Arab songs. As such, it was no surprise that Gaydamak was had a very low percentage of the votes.
Meir Porush, candidate from the Haredi “Shas” party, was the early favourite to take the post of Mayor, but after some late developments he was left soundly beaten by Nir Barkat. I am thankful that he did not get the job, after five years of Jerusalem under the stewardship of an Orthodox Jew, it might be very healthy to have a man with a fresh outlook in place to guarantee Jerusalem’s economic growth. Mr Barkat's predecessor, Rabbi Uri Lupolianski, came from the city's growing population of highly religious ultra-Orthodox Jews, and was widely perceived to have favoured them. Mr Porush similarly made his vision of municipal Israel very clear in a speech that was recorded and broadcast on a Haredi radio station. Porush told his constituents that secularism was on the wane in the Jewish state, sspeaking in Yiddish Porush declared: “In another 15 years there will not be a secular mayor in any city in Israel, [except] perhaps in some far-flung village,” It is exactly this kind of insular and opinionated view that has alienated a great number of secular Yerushalmim. It is due to the growing influence of the Haredis in Jerusalem that there has been a backlash. Rachel Azaria of the Wake Up Jerusalemites party, a party primarily formed to protect secular Israeli interests, had wanted to do the done thing and appear, along with two fellow party candidates, on a party poster on Jerusalem busses, but this poster never made it on to a bus.
"We went to the company that handles advertisements. They said - fine, just make sure there are no women. And we said - it's not just any women; it's women who are running for city council. It won't be provocative in any way. It'll be very serious. I'm married, I have children, I'm Orthodox (religiously observant).
"And they said - no, sorry, it's a rule we have. We don't allow women to appear on buses. The very radical ultra-Orthodox ruin buses if there are pictures of women on them."
"I don't want all cities in Israel to become ultra-Orthodox," she says. "I want to live in a liberal atmosphere. It's very hard at the moment to live in Jerusalem. We want to be able to stay here."
In fact, Tim Franks of the BBC raised this issue with Meir Porush during an interview in his campaign headquarters. “He said that the story was news to him. But he insisted that - as far as he was concerned - having a picture of a woman on a bus, as long as she was in modest attire, was no problem.”
Despite Porush’s admission that there is actually nothing wrong with a photograph of a woman’s head on a public bus, not much is likely to change within the Jerusalem Haredi community’s attitude to such matters. Jerusalem is increasingly becoming a Haredi city in which the secular are feeling ever more marginalised. As the article continued, “Rachel Azaria may be cross about the censoring of her ad. But it does, she says, rather prove the point of her party, whose wake-up call is aimed at fighting the increasing religiosity of the city. ‘I don't want all cities in Israel to become ultra-Orthodox... I want to live in a liberal atmosphere. It's very hard at the moment to live in Jerusalem. We want to be able to stay here.’ ”
And so it was that Nir Barkat was elected mayor of Jerusalem last week. Personally, I believe he was the best man for the job, given the choice of other candidates. He may not have been anywhere close to the perfect candidate, but he was the best option out there. Having said that, I remain wary of him, given that he is acutely aware of the demographic he is working for, and has himself proven prepared to sacrifice his own politics in order to gain the public vote. By this I mean that he was previously a member of Kadima, the political party that supervised the expulsion from Gush Katif and Amona, and left them when it became apparent that this would block his path to the Mayorship. I am concerned that he might not have Jerusalem’s best interests at heart, and will do what any true politician does; give the electorate what they want. If that happens to be against religious interests, I have every reason to be concerned.
All of which is not to say that Barkat does not have the potential to be a very good mayor for Jerusalem, however. During a recent interview with Arutz Sheva, Barkat bemoaned the fact that Tel Aviv is regarded as Israel’s capital and that it is popularly referred to as the Merkaz, the centre, whereas the true capital, the spiritual and geographical focal point of the country, is Jerusalem. It is heartening to see a secular man who values Jerusalem and understands the importance of retaining it as our undivided capital city. In fact, that he is secular is even beneficial in such a case, for if (and when) he comes to oppose politicians who ponder on handing over East Jerusalem, his argument will be all the harder to beat, given that the “narrow-minded religious zealot” card cannot be played against him.
If these elections served to show one thing, it is that there is a very strong religious community active in Jerusalem, and that there are a sizeable number of secular Israelis disillusioned with the current state of affairs, but not significant enough to act independently of the significant religious minority. Nir Barkat is a secular man, but not so secular as Dan Birron of Aleh Yarok, who when invited to speak with the other candidates at a panel at the Great Synagogue was unwilling to conform and wear a kippah. High on his agenda is that Jerusalem be maintained as the capital of the state of Israel, Barkat understands the importance of strengthening Jerusalem. To this end, he has proposed the creation of neighbourhood councils which would meet and discuss issues that affect specific areas of Jerusalem, as well as making city council meetings and decisions more open to the public. He also suggested creating a greater Jerusalem council that would connect surrounding cities such as Ma’ale Adumim, Betar, the Gush Etzion areas and other communities beyond the Green line.
If these elections served to show one thing, it is that there is a very strong religious community active in Jerusalem, and that there are a sizeable number of secular Israelis disillusioned with the current state of affairs, but not significant enough to act independently of the significant religious minority. Nir Barkat is a secular man, but not so secular as Dan Birron of Aleh Yarok, who when invited to speak with the other candidates at a panel at the Great Synagogue was unwilling to conform and wear a kippah. High on his agenda is that Jerusalem be maintained as the capital of the state of Israel, Barkat understands the importance of strengthening Jerusalem. To this end, he has proposed the creation of neighbourhood councils which would meet and discuss issues that affect specific areas of Jerusalem, as well as making city council meetings and decisions more open to the public. He also suggested creating a greater Jerusalem council that would connect surrounding cities such as Ma’ale Adumim, Betar, the Gush Etzion areas and other communities beyond the Green line.
Barkat has also been outspoken in his criticism of the Rakevet Hakala (The light rail), calling it variously Harakevet Haklalah (The accursed rail) and HaRakevet HaTakalah (The blight rail). The railway has become a sore point for many Yerushalmim, with the main street of Jaffa closed down to one lane to allow for construction. He has called the whole project ”stupid,” and has spoken of his exasperation in dealing with city hall on the issue and noted that the transportation committee has not even met once in the past five years. But all of this strikes me as opportunism, a politician seizing upon a popular grievance and milking it for his own advantage.
It is pleasing to see a forward thinking mayor taking up office, a man who wants Jerusalem to develop economically and socially. He has mentioned that while Jerusalem sees 1-2 million tourists each year, other cities in the world like London, Paris and New York see in the area of 40 million. He estimated that there would be around 3 billion people in the world who would like to come to visit Jerusalem, and it is up to us to tap this huge potential resource. He struck the nail on the head when he said that “Tourists are not interested in seeing a movie, but want to see an aspect of the culture unique to the city.” There is a lot of investment that needs to be made, but the revenues will greatly outweigh any costs.
While he is a secular man, Barkat was granted the support of a number of Rabbanim, notably Rabbi Eliyahu and Rav Haim Druckman due to his liberal and pluralistic outlook. There is one caveat, however. Barkat was a member of Kadima until he left the party earlier this year over a disagreement over settlement in East Jerusalem. Kadima, a largely irreligious party, has placed Jerusalem on the negotiating table with the Palestinians, whereas Barkat is adamant that the city should not be divided. He has said that he hopes to build more Jewish homes in Israeli-Arab areas in the east of the city. This is just a theory, but I am slightly wary of Barkat in that this might all have been posturing in an attempt to win a firm support from his local constituents, people almost certainly bound to take exception to any plans to hand over control of East Jerusalem. Knowing that being a member of Kadima would serve as a reason to vote against him in the eyes of many religious people, did he act accordingly and unceremoniously ditch Kadima in order to assume and exploit the role of defender of Zion for his own gain? Time will tell.
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