Voter turnout in Beit Shemesh reached 68%, representing 32,585 residents voting. The incumbent, Shas’ Moshe Abutbul received 16,926 votes and Eli Cohen 15,155. The third candidate, Meir Balish received 504 votes.
The chareidi parties will have nine seats on the city council: Shas 3, Degel (חן) 3, Agudah with Gur, Belz, Vishnitz (כח) 2 and the Klall Chassidi list 1.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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10 Responses
What a shame. 🙁
And, as they ostracize the DL and the secular members of the town, how will the city get out of debt? Who’s going to pay the bills?
Baruch Hashem. May the majority continue to govern the city with the same wisdom they have for the past five years. And may they rule for many more years.
not sure where you got your info from, but according to the iriya web site the numbers are different
http://betshemesh.muni.il/?view=elections&module=kalpisUpdate&kalpi=&kalpiTxt=%D7%90%D7%95+%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%A0%D7%A1+%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8
as of about 8pm last night Abutbul had 17201 (51.4%), Cohen had 15749 (47.1%) and Blayish 521 (1.5%)
the chareidi parties – degel, shas, aguda and kehilos had 4968 (14.8%), 4767 (14.2%), 3501 (10.4%) & 2661 (7.9%) votes respectively
Eli cohen’s party had 4826 (14.4%), likud got 3702 (11.0%) Atid hair got 2847 (8.5%) and Blayish’s party (in conjunction with chabad) got 1572 (4.7%)
all other parties got less than 1500 votes including Tov who got only 1277 (3.8%)
all in all 33471 votes for mayor and 33554 votes for city council
it is still to be sen how the seats in city council are divided. it is likely that the chareidi parties will get as many as 10 of the 19 seats.
i hope that there will be a wide coallition this time and that we can put the nonsense that has been going on here for the last year or so behind us.
with regards to #2’s concerns as to who will pay for the cities expenses; there are many working chareidim in the city who pay full rates and taxes and will continue to do so.
in addition the city is still booming with foreigners moving here constantly. most of those peole work full time annd pay tax.
the threat that non chareidim will be leaving the city in droves for greener pastures (such as modiin) is just election hype and propaganda. on the whole this city gets on very well and it will continue to do so.
hopefully abutbul will have the ability to continue making changes for the better in the iriya and our city will prosper.
some of the city departments are still run by people from the Vaknin era and those departments are in dire need of a clean-out.
Vaknin was known to be corrupt (there is a reason he only got about 15% of the vore 5 years ago) and his legacy is hard to correct.
a few years ago Abutbul tried to fire the head of one of the departments installed by Vaknin and he received bullets in the post.
slowly things are getting better and Be”H with a bit of good will from all sides they will continue to do so.
The city will get out of debt just fine. It is a myth that the DL and Secular support the city. Many many people here pay the correct arnona! What’s sick is that the non Chareidi are making a stink about how some forgeries were “found”.. my bet is that they were planted by non Chareidim because of their paranoia that Abutbul plans to make Beit Shemesh a Chareidi city. We saw DL boys handing out Satmar papers to try to convince people not to vote so Eli Cohen would win. I also know of a call that was made to my husband’s Shiur Rebbe by Eli Cohen himself that if he votes for him that he will help him with the project he is doing.. The Cohen corruption is so under raps because it’s much more interesting to post about Chareidi “corruption”!
Mayor race not finalized yet…. No official ruling… Eli is requesting a full audit prior to release due to all the fraud
Arrests was already made in conjunction with voter fraud.
Actually, there are 19 seats on the city council – and 10 have been captured by non-Chareidi parties, per the reported final numbers. Re: the mayoral race – the final margin was 1,018 votes, with Abutbul getting 50.6%. Given some of the reported fraud, I think a full audit is reasonable. “V’heyisem Niki’im meHashem u’meYisrael” – you need to not only BE clean, you need to be SEEN to be clean. After all, didn’t Moshe Rabeinu give a detailed accounting of the donations for the Mishkan in order to prove that everything was done honestly?
an Israeli Yid
chareidirbs: i’m with you 100%
RamatShilo: i think you guys should secede from RBS, cuz you obviously don’t seem to belong
According to the final numbers, Chareidi parties won 10 out of 19 council seats.