Likud MK Miri Regev announced on Friday that she intends to put herself forward for the chairmanship of her party and the premiership after current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu steps down.
Speaking to the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, Regev said Likud members should vote for her due to her Sephardic roots and her background in the periphery. Regev was born in the southern development town of Kiryat Gat to immigrants from Morocco, Felix and Marcelle Siboni.
“The time has come to have a Sephardi prime minister,” Regev said. “I think the Likud rank and file must vote this time for someone who represents their class, their ethnicity and their agenda.
“Sephardi Likudniks voted over the years for ‘white people’ to lead them. I think the day after Bibi Netanyahu, Likudniks will have to some soul-searching.”
Regev stressed that she did not intend to run against Netanyahu, for whom she had only praise.
“We have terrific Sephardi people of good quality who can lead the Likud later on, after Bibi Netanyahu,” she said. “I definitely see myself as part of that leadership, leading the Likud.”
Regev joined other Likud MKs who have announced that they intend to seek the leadership of the party in the post-Netanyahu era, including Nir Barkat, Yuli Edelstein, Israel Katz, Avi Dichter and Tzachi Hanegbi.
She criticized the wealthy Barkat, saying “not everything can be purchased with money.”
She praised former US president Barack Obama, because he is African American. She compared Sephardim to African Americans, saying that they did the menial labor for Ashkenazim over the years.
“When Obama was elected, I sat and cried for an hour in front of the television,” she said. “When I saw movies and read books on the slavery of blacks and about black women having to sit in the back of the bus, it hurt me, because where I come from makes me care about justice.”
Regev called the government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid “an Ashkenazi elitist bond and said Bennett was not her prime minister. She said the country was run by what she called “the deep state.”
While Regev said she was committed to the Likud, she warned she could form a new party if she was not elected.
“If the Likudniks continue to elect leaders with ‘white’ DNA, a new Likud will arise,” she warned. “There will be a real Sephardi Likud that will express the Sephardi voice that has been quieted for years.”
A number of leading Likud MKs attacked Regev for her comments.
Edelstein, number two on the Likud list, said in an interview to Channel 20, “we don’t choose parties based on ethnicity, sector, religion, race or sex. I don’t think that the Likud will begin to check people’s identification cards. I don’t know why she said that.”
He added that based on the Likud’s most recent primary elections, the party’s DNA is built from all sectors and groups.
Barkat, former mayor of Jerusalem and seventh on the Likud list, said in an interview to N12 on Friday afternoon, “[Regev’s comments] are divisive and have no place in the movement.”
“We are a movement of the people and, thank God, we have everyone – secular, religious and traditional, Jewish and non-Jewish. We have the entire variety and choose our leaders based on their vision and on the ideals they bring with them from home,” he said.
“If we want to return to re-take control of the government, we need to band together,” he added.
Galit Distal Atbaryan struck a softer tone, saying that while she respected Regev and might even support her bid, she would not vote along ethnic lines.
“I recently spoke in the Knesset plenum about how not one or two, but nearly 70 Israeli judges come from a NON-European background,” she said in an interview to Ynet.
“That is an example of something that interests me, because it shows a broad trend and says something about the concentration of power, about academic abilities and about social mobility. But to say that I would choose a prime minister because she is a woman and from Middle Eastern origin?”
Following the criticism, Regev told Channel 13: “Perhaps I should have used a different expression” instead of white people, but she reinforced her other statements.