Israel’s Labor Party elected Merav Michaeli on Sunday as its new party leader ahead of the March elections. Michaeli easily defeated several rivals in the party’s primaries, receiving 77% of the vote.
A month ago, outgoing Labor chairman Economy Minister Amir Peretz announced he is stepping down as the leader of the beleaguered party.
An intriguing fact about Michaeli is that she is the granddaughter of Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian-Jewish journalist and lawyer who, on one hand, is known for having helped Jews escape from Europe during the Holocaust on the Kastner train. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis. The verdict triggered the fall of the Cabinet. The courts then reversed themselves and found him not guilty
Michaeli is the daughter of Kasztner’s only child, his daughter Zsuzsa. In her inaugural speech to the Knesset, Michaeli described her grandfather as a man who saved “tens of thousands of Jews” by negotiating with Eichmann.
Michaeli is a leading progressive voice in the Knesset.
The Labor party, which led Israel for its first 30 years, dwindled down to only three MK in the previous election: Peretz, Welfare Minister Itzik Shuli, and Michaeli, who joined the opposition due to her fierce opposition to Peretz’s decision to join the Likud/Blue and White unity government despite his promise not to join a Netanyahu government.
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMESֱ
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