Gimpel and Abramowitz saw the opening and ran a great campaign, registering many people to the party. They, predictably, dropped one person from the ticket – leaving Jeremy Gimpel.
In the battle for head of the party Gimpel had to choose between Naftali Bennett and Z’vulon Orlev. He and every other candidate had to choose because these two personalities had registered the lion’s share of primary voters and whoever backed them in the race for chairman would receive, in exchange, backing in primaries for the party’s Knesset list.
Gimpel chose Orlev, undoubtedly believing he had registered more people and perhaps because of Bennett’s troubling private comments against the merger with the National Union. Gimpel wanted to back the leader who would unify the national-religious camp.
Apparently, he chose wrong, as Bennett crushed Orlev. Nevertheless, many of those Orlev himself registered may have voted for Bennett. And even if Orlev only registered the under ten thousand that voted for him, that doesn’t mean these ten thousand aren’t a strong enough base to put Gimpel in a realistic spot on the list. And there may be many who voted for Bennett who will vote for Gimpel, perhaps many of the people Gimpel registered, even though he had endorsed Orlev.
In any case, we may be in different parties, but Jeremy Gimpel is representative of the English-speaking community in Israel. His message represents the selfless Zionist commitment of the community in the political sphere.
Perhaps he even represents the naive idealism of the community. Israelis would say our idealism makes us “friierim” (suckers). But Israeli politics is in sore need of such idealism.
My hope is that all Anglos who are members of the Jewish Home should make sure they turn up at the polling station and support Jeremy Gimpel and help him get into the Knesset.