The Eretz Chadasha party of Eldad Yaniv, former bureau chief to Defense Minister
Ehud Barak, will reveal new allegations against Attorney-General Yehuda
Weinstein in its election commercials that begin running Tuesday, Yaniv said in
an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
The advertisements are expected to
expose Weinstein’s connections to the nation’s top politicians and accuse him of
corruption. The Weinstein ads will join commercials targeting Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu, former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, and other
politicians in YouTube videos Eretz Chadasha posted on its website.
“We
are running to fight the connection between wealth, power, and the press in
Israel,” Yaniv said. “There must be a real protest vote in the January 22
election to get activists into the Knesset who would be a fighting
opposition. All the old parties in Israel are part of the system governed
by tycoons and vote contractors with corrupt primaries. To do it differently we
needed to form a new framework that would be transparent and beholden to no
one.”
Yaniv said Israel should learn from the United States, which has
hearings before key appointments to expose all the secrets about the candidates
and remove all their skeletons from their closets.
He said his
advertisements would also reveal corruption by the owners of the top circulation
Hebrew newspapers, Israel HaYom and Yediot Aharonot.
More than a year ago
Ma’ariv accused Yaniv of being behind the summer 2011 summer protests. The
newspaper said American pollster Stanley Greenberg, who now works for the Labor
Party, was also involved in planning them. Yaniv vigorously denied the
report.
“Whoever thinks I initiated the protests is an idiot,” Yaniv
said. “It was started by young people on their own and then it got larger and
larger. I said in advance that protests would happen but they were
spontaneous.”
When the Post ran an article on the smaller parties that
are not expected to pass the two percent electoral threshold, Eretz Chadasha
refused to cooperate, because its leaders are convinced that the polls are
wrong. Eldad complained that Israeli pollsters do not poll people with
cellphones or online and they do not know how to reach young
people.
“Israeli pollsters don’t help democracy because like in the
United States, they are unscientific,” Yaniv said. “In the US there were
pollsters who said the presidential race there was neck and neck. If polls here
result in people not voting, they endanger Israeli democracy.
But I think
young people see what is going on online, they know what is really happening,
and they will follow their hearts.”