Rabbi Aryeh Stern Withdraws Support for Ayelet Shaked

Minister Ayelet Shaked, chairperson of the Jewish Home party, continues to state that she will run in the upcoming Israeli elections, but according to the latest polls, she is still far from passing the electoral threshold.

The polls are not the only things going bad for Shaked. Some of her supporters are backing away as well. Shaked had managed to gather support from individual rabbis during the election campaign, but now, Rabbi Aryeh Stern, the former rov of the city of Yerushalayim, who had earlier expressed support for the party, in a report published by journalist Dvir Amar announced that he retracts it.

“The given situation brings us to the thought that there is no point in going to the elections when the percentage of the block is not guaranteed,” he said. “At the moment, it is not working out.”

Officials at the Jewish Home party claimed a few weeks ago that there are some rabbis who are afraid to express support for the party publicly. According to them, “there are quite a few rabbis who support us behind closed doors, but they don’t dare publish their endorsement, because they don’t want to go through what [Jonathan] Pollard went through, whitewashing and shaming.”

They attributed the rabbis’ concern to the fact that the Religious Zionist party is currently the largest. “There is also the issue with Smotrich, who no one wants to quarrel with, because if we do not move and he is in the government, he will control all the budgets. It takes a lot of courage.”

{Matzav.com Israel}