Beit Shemesh Vote Voided as Showdown Looms
Image by gettyimages
A Jerusalem court voided the results of municipal elections in Beit Shemesh over fraud accusations, paving the way for a rematch between a secular challenger and the haredi Orthodox incumbent.
The Jerusalem District Court’s decision on Thursday came after the results of the Oct. 22 election were challenged by Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and losing candidate Eli Cohen, who was backed in the election by the city’s Modern Orthodox and secular communities.
Haredi Orthodox Mayor Moshe Abutbul, who had won the election by 956 votes, said he would challenge the court’s decision. He has 45 days to file an appeal with the Supreme Court. According to law, elections must be held within 120 days of the court’s ruling or after appeals have been exhausted.
Abutbul supporters are alleged to have voted multiple times, paid voters to cast ballots for Abutbul and facilitated fraudulent voter registration.
Beit Shemesh, a city of 80,000 near Jerusalem, has been the site of sometimes violent clashes between haredi Orthodox extremists and non-haredim. Additional police were sent to Beit Shemesh on Thursday following the court decision in anticipation of rioting.
In July, a group of haredi men reportedly smashed the windows of a bus after a woman refused to move to the back.
The following month, police arrested 14 haredi rioters who blocked a major street and set trash bins on fire to protest construction at a Beit Shemesh site that once may have been a burial ground.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
