The Ometz watchdog organization appealed to the Attorney-General’s Office on
Sunday to open an investigation into whether Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali
Bennett had hundreds of haredi men registered as party members so that they
would vote for him in Bayit Yehudi’s primary leadership election.
The
request follows an investigation broadcast on Friday night by Channel 1 that
alleged that Bennett, or someone on his behalf, gave cash payments to
representatives of the Kretshnif hassidic dynasty to vote for Bennett in the
party primary.
Ometz claimed that if the allegations were true, it would
constitute a violation of the 1992 Parties Law prohibiting the payment of party
membership dues for another person, or any other payments, in return for votes
in internal elections and is punishable by a year’s
imprisonment.
Bennett’s office strongly denied the
accusations.
“Naftali Bennett did not give and will not give anything in
exchange for support, not to the hassidic dynasty in question and not to anyone
else,” a spokesman for the Bayit Yehudi leader said in a statement to the
press.
He also said that it was possible that the registration of members
of the Kretshnif community were registered as Bayit Yehudi members by party
officials in Rehovot, where the Kretshnif headquarters is located, for reasons
of municipal politics.
The spokesman said that if those who registered as
party members had not voted for the party in the general election such activity
was “unacceptable.”
He added that the party called for any information on
illegal primary activities to be immediately turned over to the legal
authorities.
Approximately 350 Kretshnif hassidim in Rehovot registered
as Bayit Yehudi members before the primary election. The Srugim news website
reported that the unusual registration of so many haredi men as members of the
national-religious party could have been part of a plan to promote the candidacy
of one of the party officials in the city for chairmanship of Bayit Yehudi’s
Rehovot branch, as well as for the coming municipal elections at the end of the
year.