Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and Photos

The Maariv headline today says it all - “Star Wars” is right. Now try to keep up, the hand is quicker then the eye.

The old news, literally, is that Shimon Peres, one of the founding fathers of the Labour party, a man who stood shoulder to shoulder with Yitzhak Rabin and was among the leaders of the Oslo initiative – has left the party and is joining Kadima, Sharon’s brand spanking new party. These discussions started right around the time that he LOST (again) the Labour party leadership to Amir Peretz. Say no more.

So if we are discussing Kadima (Forward in Hebrew) then there have been other star additions. One of the founders of Shinui (Change in Hebrew), Professor Ariel Reichman (Dean of the Law faculty in Tel Aviv Univeristy) has decided to defect and move to Sharon’s party. He also got a promise from Sharon that he will be the next Minister of Education in the new government. Apparently, the leader of the party, Yosef Tommy Lapid is a little overpowering and the defecting member has been complaining about the loss of the democratic process within the party. Some say that the party has officially died with this move and to make things a little more official, a Knesset member, one of the party’s ex-members, got on the stand and said a quick verse for the dying.

Sharon also called in the troops these last few days. 72 local government leaders were invited for a gathering with Sharon and were asked to join the new party. There has been a good response so far. The new members are ex Likud and ex Labour party members.

Shaul Mofaz has not agreed to make the move to Kadima and that apparently has been a little difficult for Sharon to accept. Their working relations are currently described as “professional and correct”.

Now, Peretz and Labour. Well, a big boost yesterday when one of Israel’s hardest hitting journalists announced she was leaving Channel 2 and joining the Labour party (sort of like Larry King joining the Democratic Party). Shelly Yachimovich, a news personality for a long time and is known for being a little aggressive sometimes in her interviews. She is smart, very opinionated and generally well respected. Definitely going to make things interesting. Shelly is an active character portrayed by Chelli in the Comedy show Wonderful Country, the writers of the show were happy to hear the news, saying they felt the character was getting a little tired.

Another interesting addition to the new Labour party is Avi Shaked. One of Israel’s richest people and a behind the scenes man for several political initiatives has announced his candidacy to the party. Describing himself as a “socialist first and millionaire later” he managed to stay out of the limelight.
He made his fortune online with a network of online gaming operations and a software company, Random Logic, that operates the online casino 888 and the poker site, Pacific Poker. The company went public in September in the UK with an IPO worth $1.04 Billion. A multi million dollar socialist !

As always, stay tuned…