ISRAEL BETTER VOTE A PRO TEMPLE-PRO PRAYER MOUNT JERUSALEM MAYOR IN

KING JESUS IS COMING FOR US ANY TIME NOW. THE RAPTURE. BE PREPARED TO GO.

RABBI STEVEN DENOON WARNS ISRAELI LEADERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQTm_kkg62A&feature=c4-overview&list=UU3q-ByZ2eoOikcEiajMYXXA

ISRAELIS AND JEWS BETTER VOTE IN A PRO TEMPLE-PRO ISRAELI PRAYER ON THE MOUNT MAYOR.IF USE WANT TO OBEY THE TRUE ONE GOD USE CLAIM TO LOVE.THE BIBLE SAYS YOU GET WHOEVER YOU VOTE IN.THE THING IS.YOU USE WISDOM AND MAKE SURE THE ONE YOU VOTE FOR IS GODLY AND AGREES WITH YOUR BELIEFS.IF NOT DON'T VOTE.BECAUSE WE GIVE ACCOUNT TO GOD EVEN FOR THE VOTE WE DO.IF IT AGREES WITH GOD-ITS GREAT.IF NOT THEN WE DON'T VOTE FOR ANY OF THE LEADERS. 

Polling booths close as municipal elections end

Less than half of eligible voters showed up to vote for their mayors and city council members, with turnout highest in Arab sector

By Joshua Davidovich, Stuart Winer and Gavriel Fiske October 22, 2013, 11:09 pm 0-The Times of Israel

The elections for Israel’s mayors and municipal council members drew barely 42.6% of voters by 8:30 p.m. Turnout was especially low in Tel Aviv (22%) and Jerusalem (32%), though Jerusalem’s numbers are dragged down by the refusal of hundreds of thousands of Arab residents to vote in protest at Israel’s control of the city.Only a few major cities showed a turnout as low as Jerusalem, with Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion’s turnout reaching just 19% by 7 p.m., Netanya and Tel Aviv showing 21%, and Beersheba, Ramat Gan and Rehovot reaching 23%.Arab cities, on the other hand, saw a very high turnout, led by Kafr Kara with 94% by 7 p.m., Sakhnin with 78%, Hurfeish with 77%, and a number of cities in the mid-to-low 70% range.Local governments are elected for five-year terms and have significant influence over major public services, including education, welfare and urban planning.Final results are expected to be published early Wednesday, though reports indicate results are already available for Haifa, where incumbent Yona Yahav has reportedly won reelection in a city that saw, at last count, over 40 percent turnout.Voter turnout for local elections is traditionally much lower than national polls, but there were a number of hotly contested races around the country, including in Jerusalem, where incumbent Nir Barkat hoped to retain his mayoral seat against newcomer Moshe Lion.The Jerusalem contest was marked by bitter accusations and attempts to influence voters through mass SMS messages and phone calls.One text sent around at 8:15 p.m. urged Jerusalemites to go out and vote because “the Haredim are voting en masse.” It warned that “this is the last chance to stop the kombina” — a reference to the Lion candidacy.Less than an hour later, text messages received by thousands and bizarrely signed by “the Barak (sic) campaign” purported to reassure voters in Barkat’s name that “we have won the elections. We’ll meet for another five years of action and Jerusalem will succeed.” The senders of the messages appeared to be trying to convince Barkat voters who had not yet voted that there was little reason to go to the polls.Ten minutes later, another text message, this time from the Barkat campaign, warned, “Don’t be fooled by the spin. The battle is very tight. Every vote counts. Run and vote for Barkat now, and save Jerusalem. The polls close at 10.”Arab residents of Jerusalem largely continued the tradition of boycotting the city’s elections. In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa, just one voter had cast a ballot by mid-afternoon.MK Meir Sheetrit (Hatnua), a former cabinet minister and mayor of Yavne, said in the Knesset today that low turnout numbers are caused by a widespread belief that local elections are unimportant, and suggested those who don’t vote should be fined.“We need to fine citizens who don’t vote,” he said, adding that he had proposed a law instituting such a fine. “I suggested that whoever doesn’t vote won’t get a day off, but it seems that it’s… easier to fine citizens who don’t vote.”

Moshe Lion a little lost on his new home turf

His ostensible partnership with Shas’s Aryeh Deri is the ‘kiss of death’ for some voters at the Old Katamon polling station where the Likud-Beytenu underdog cast his ballot

By Raphael Ahren October 22, 2013, 4:05 pm 1-The times of Israel

Moshe Lion may or may not be the better mayoral candidate, but the man from Givatayim evidently doesn’t really know his way around in Jerusalem — not even the neighborhood where he now lives… and votes.

On Tuesday morning, Lion and his wife drove through the Old Katamon neighborhood to cast their votes. Exiting a shiny silver BMW — which was later parked in a prohibited location, causing a mini-scandal — the city’s would-be first couple, surrounded by reporters, supporters and volunteers for the opposing candidate, strode confidently along the sidewalk and straight past the entrance of the school in which their polling station is located. Onlookers near the school’s entry watched and wondered where the candidate was going, until someone realized the error and forced the Lions and the knot of people around them to effect an inelegant turnaround.As of earlier this year, Lion, the official candidate of Likud-Yisrael Beytenu, officially resides on Jerusalem’s Keren Hayesod Street, and was assigned to cast his ballot at the nearby Beit Hahinuch School on Kaf Tet BeNovember Street. Most polls predict Lion will lose the race against Mayor Nir Barkat, and anecdotal evidence from Lion’s polling station in this upscale neighborhood in central Jerusalem did nothing to undermine the notion. Several residents said they saw him as both an outsider and a puppet of Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman and Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, his two most prominent backers. Lion is also said to have the backing of most — but not all — of the city’s Haredim, thanks to what Barkat alleges is a kombina (a sordid political ploy) engineered by the ultra-Orthodox Deri and the fiercely secular Liberman.

“I lived here for 40 years, he’s been here for all of three months. He simply doesn’t know his way around here,” said Alex Ragen, a native New Yorker who immigrated to Israel in 1971, of Lion. “He’s a sleazy politician,” Ragen, a skullcap-wearing former software developer, added. “And he has the backing of Shas, which is the kiss of death for any politician.”Out of more than a dozen voters interviewed outside the school, one said he had voted for Lion. “It’s not because of what the rabbis commanded. Of course I’d never go against what they say, but this time I understand them,” said Yehuda, a 23-year-old Haredi student at Hebron yeshiva. “Lion will be better for the residents. I voted for him both because of the rabbis’ order and out of my own reasoning.”Barkat’s supremacy on Lion’s new home turf was unmistakable. The polls opened at 7 a.m., and for the first two hours, campaigning at the school and its surroundings was tightly in the hands of about a dozen teenage volunteers for the Barkat ticket. The noise they made caught the attention of a group of toddlers playing in the kindergarten across the street. The teenagers chanted “Nir, Nir for mayor,” and the two and three-year-olds, slightly misunderstanding the message, yelled back, “Bibi for mayor.”

Later, volunteers for several other lists seeking seats on the city council — including Jerusalemites, Awakening and Meretz-Labor — arrived to lobby. But Lion’s campaign stand was a pitiful sight. Until about 9:15, two high school girls sat at a table, hardly moving and certainly not trying to convince anyone to vote for Lion. “Nobody stopped by to say ‘good job’; the only thing people say to me is that it’s ‘awful and appalling [that we're here],’” said Tamar, 18, who said she was only present because she was getting paid. Then, five additional Lion backers arrived. They tried to chant a few slogans, and were promptly shouted down by a much larger group of Barkat supporters.

When Inbar, a 35-year-old volunteer for Rachel Azaria’s Jerusalemites party, asked an approaching voter if she might suggest a vote for “Nir and Rachel,” the voters replied: “Barkat is obvious.”

Outside the Old Katamon polling station where Moshe Lion cast his ballot (photo credit: Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)

Anat Koren, a nonreligious Jerusalem resident in her 30s, said she’d voted for Barkat simply because he’s secular and Lion is not. “That’s the only reason.”Orthodox voters, too, were clearly with the incumbent. “Barkat contributed a lot to the city in the realm of culture and many other things,” a 35-year-old lawyer sporting a knitted skullcap said. “But more importantly: Whoever has Deri’s support doesn’t have mine.”

Before arriving here to vote at around 10:10 a.m., the Orthodox Lion had prayed at the fresh grave of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and asked for divine assistance at the Western Wall. The secular Barkat was there at around the same time. Lion’s schedule, handed out to reporters on Monday, read “Prayer at the Western Wall” while the mayor’s program spoke of a “visit” there. But photographs seemed to show he prayed too.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat prays at the Western Wall on October 22, 2013, during Israel’s municipal elections. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

After exercising his civil duty, Lion plunged into a day full of campaign stops, most of them in areas where he likely has more supporters. First, two hours in the northern neighborhoods of Ramot and Pisgat Ze’ev and even the far-flung Neve Yaakov. Then, after a lunch break, the Western part of the city — a school in Kiryat Moshe, a community center in Ir Ganim and three schools in Kiryat Yovel. Toward the evening, he was set to head south to Talpiot and Armon Hanatziv. At a polling station on Derech Bethlehem in Talpiot, with a diverse mix of middle-class, working-class, Orthodox and secular residents, and a fair number of Ethiopian immigrants voting, his supporters were certainly louder and more numerous at mid-morning than the rather cowed Barkat camp.Meanwhile, Barkat voted at the WIZO school in his Beit Hakerem neighborhood, and embarked from there on a similarly busy day trying to woo the undecideds, with a lunch stop at “Falafel BeMoshava” in the German Colony.Neither was planning to spend time in the Haredi strongholds, despite that community’s potential for determining the race. Lion was originally banking on the support of the entire Haredi community, and did gain the backing of the United Torah Judaism party, but several Hasidic factions decided at the last minute to withhold their endorsement. “Bnei Torah,” a Jerusalem-based rogue wing of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah party, went so far as to field its own candidate for mayor, Haim Epstein. Backed by the influential Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, he is expected to garner several thousand votes.

Talking to residents on the streets of Mea Shearim and adjacent Haredi neighborhoods, it quickly emerged that the city’s ultra-Orthodox community is everything but monolithic.The more anti-Zionist Haredim don’t vote at all, since the elections are being organized by a regime they reject on religious grounds.Yekutiel Kirschenfeld, a 23-year-old from Har Nof, did vote — UTJ for city council and Lion for mayor. Why? “Because he promised to lower arnona [municipal tax].” Kirschenfeld, who works in a Mea Shearim housewares store, said he can’t afford to pay NIS 7,000 (about $2,000) every year and hopes for a serious reduction, even for Haredim who work. “I’m not sure that Lion will really do it, but he promised.”

Yehuda Riss, who owns a nearby fish store, said he voted for Shas and Lion, mostly because “Barkat is anti-Haredi.” Eliyahu, one of his employees, voted for the accountant from Givatayim simply because the rabbis said so. Did he know what Lion promised to do differently than Barkat? No, but that wasn’t not important, he said. “I’m a Litvak, I do what Rabbi [Aharon Leib] Shteinman and Rabbi [Haim] Kanievsky say.”Eliyahu Weiss, a Haredi man in his 50s, said he voted UTJ for city council — and no one for mayor. “My rabbi didn’t say anything [about whom to vote for], so I didn’t vote for anyone.”Avraham Soloveitchik, a scion of the rabbinical dynasty who was born and raised in Jerusalem, said he doesn’t ever vote. Not because it’s a forbidden legitimization of Zionism but mainly because of a dictum issued by one of his late ancestors. “Voting is neither a mitzvah [commandment] nor an aveirah [sin], the Brisker Rav said. So I prefer not to get involved.”

Beit Shemesh votes in the shadow of religious war

Situated halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and divided between ultra-Orthodox and secular and modern religious camps, the city has mayoral stakes that are unusually high

By Mitch Ginsburg October 22, 2013, 5:42 pm 0-The Times of Israel

“Our holy Torah prohibits participation in the unholy elections,” read one stern black-and-white placard on Levi Eshkol Street in the Yefe Nof neighborhood. Nearby was another one, proclaiming in red and yellow that the inhabitants of the house do not own any sort of device that allows access to the Internet or to movies. “Here we do not chase away the Divine Presence, God forbid,” it read.The majority of the signs, though, were in favor of the incumbent, Moshe Abutbul, the Shas party representative who has been at the center of the religious conflict.“The extremists who put up those signs are a tiny minority,” said Chaim, an ultra-Orthodox resident of the neighborhood and a kashrut supervisor at a nearby matzah factory. “They are 100 people and they cause me to suffer too. They know no limits. And besides,” he said, “they put the signs in the window and then send their wives out to vote.”

A derelict playground in Beit Shemesh, October 22, 2013. (photo credit: Times of Israel/Mitch Ginsburg)

For his part, Chaim had just cast a ballot for Abutbul, a once secular father of eight who has served on the city council since 1993. He asserted that after years of negligence the city had come back to life under the first-term mayor. “He built new sidewalks in the neighborhood, established a well-baby clinic and a new road out of the city to cut back on traffic,” he said.All around Chaim was garbage: stuck in bushes, in the corners of the playground and alongside the newly constructed buildings. A nearby playground featured an uprooted slide and was littered with glass and bricks. “It’s a private area. That’s why it isn’t cleaned,” Chaim said.

Mayor Moshe Abutbul on the morning of the elections (Photo credit: Yaakov Lederman/ Flash 90)

Chedva, in modest but colorful dress, walked down the nearby stairs on Ben Kisma Street. She was once a moderate ultra-Orthodox voter, she said, but as the neighborhood grew more extreme she felt increasingly isolated. “No one here lets you live as you see fit,” she said. Her boys, who wear knitted head coverings, were constantly excluded. “In the end, we left,” she said, noting that she now lives in Jerusalem but still votes in Beit Shemesh.Outside the neighborhood voting center, at a childcare center, an ultra-Orthodox immigrant from Boro Park, New York, a father of nine, explained his rationale for supporting Abutbul. “I used to get 1,900 shekels ($540) childcare from the government. Today I get 1,000,” he said. Yisroel, who refused to give more than his first name, said that if Abutbul’s primary rival, Eli Cohen, was elected, the municipality would do locally just what the government without the ultra-Orthodox parties did nationally, cutting the state support for families with many children. An employee of the chevra kadisha burial society, who pays municipal taxes but refrained from taking Israeli citizenship, he said, “I will not turn the other cheek to Eli Cohen.”A thin young man with a wispy red beard and clear plastic glasses came out of the voting booth. He, too, had voted for Abutbul. “I’m a Gur Hasid,” he said. “The rebbe said to vote for him. That’s it. I don’t look to the right and I don’t look to the left. There are no issues that are important to me. What’s important to me is what he said.”A pair of young religious boys with short sidelocks and sneakers came up to one of the Hassidic parties’ tables and tried to bum a cigarette off one of the young men. They couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. Asked if there was a soccer court or somewhere else for them to spend their free time after school, they chuckled. “Abutbul’s a cheapskate,” one said.In a more secular part of town, the Water Tower neighborhood, Dmitry Diga stood outside and tried to convince passersby to vote for the secular Cohen for mayor and Yelena Konianski for city council. A security guard on the Jerusalem light rail system and an immigrant from Ukraine who converted to Judaism while in the army, he said there was nothing for young people to do in Beit Shemesh. “All you have here are corner stores and parks to get drunk in.”Rosa Reich, seated nearby, herself an immigrant from Ukraine, said “the city is dirty. There are no community centers. There are no after school activities for the kids. There is no tennis. And on Shabbat I don’t even go out of the house.”Maybe, Diga said, noting the deep secular-religious divide, “we should just split into two cities.”But in the Scheinfeld neighborhood, home to many English-speaking religious residents, there was no talk of disengagement and plenty of spirited campaigning. “The issue is, will this city be a place for all or just for certain segments?” said Jonathan Duker, a religious educator whose son goes to the boys branch of the Orot School that was at the center of a December 2011 uproar, when extremist factions from within the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood were filmed spitting and cursing at the eight-year-old Na’ama Margolese on her way to school. “Every parent had to deal with that kind of behavior,” said Duker. His son added, “They threw fish at me.”

Na’ama Magolese and her mother shortly after the extremists’ harassment became public (Photo credit: Uri Lenz/ Flash 90)

Shortly after Duker asserted that Abutbul had tried to “stifle religious Zionist culture,” Cohen showed up at the Uziel Elementary school to cast his vote. The crowd of supporters began chanting and Cohen told them to “save it” for later. “Now: rabota, rabota,” he said, using the Russian word for work.Speaking briefly to The Times of Israel, Cohen said he assumed that most English speakers in Beit Shemesh want “a normal life, in a normal, clean city. No one here is looking for a religious war,” he said, “at least not me.”Finally, after speaking with Tilahon Mula, an Ethiopian immigrant who said he supported Cohen because Abutbul had not followed through on his promise to build a synagogue for members of the community, The Times of Israel reached Beit Shemesh’s most famous resident over the phone. Rabbi MK (Yesh Atid) Dov Lipman, who was pushed into politics by the rising tide of extremism in the city, said the two primary issues at stake were “overall mismanagement” and the ceding of control to extremists.Asked which way it would go in this closely contested and pivotal race, Lipman said, “I think it all comes down to the percentage of secular voters who come out to vote. The norm is 50 percent, in which case Eli [Cohen] can’t win. If we get 70 percent [turnout], then I think he will.”