Beit Shemesh Vote Voided as Showdown Looms
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.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO