Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced today that the candidate he is proposing on behalf of the Jewish Agency as the successor to President Yitzhak Herzog is Dr. Ruth Calderon, a former MK and spiritual woman. But Lapid and Calderon can not yet raise a glass to “cheers” – as there are some parameters missing for the candidacy that they have been hoping for in the national institutions for many months.
Let’s start with the fact that Minister of Intelligence Elazar Stern ran for the senior position a few months ago, with the support of the coalition leaders, and especially of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his party leader, Yair Lapid. But right-wingers are not enthusiastic about Calderon’s candidacy for the job. On the contrary. More than a month ago we first published that Calderon told her associates that the attempt to promote her as a candidate on behalf of the coalition was unsuccessful, and thanked those members for their support.
Calderon told her party members that despite attempts to advance her candidacy, the appointment ran into difficulties mainly on the part of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s men.
Indeed, Bennett’s hive does not see Calderon as a candidate they are comfortable with – and we are not expected to see a letter of support for Calderon, as the Prime Minister issued to Stern – who withdrew his candidacy due to heavy public pressure on controversial statements during a radio interview.
In addition, unlike other candidates, Calderon is a red sheet among the more conservative audiences in American and Israeli Jewry. It will be difficult to support her candidacy and even vote for her.
Calderon, at the moment, is not the coalition candidate, but the candidate of the Yesh Atid party. Just as Omar Yankelevich is the candidate of the Blue and White Party, so Calderon will enjoy the support of a prominent and senior figure in Israeli politics – who can become prime minister in the coming years, but not with the support of other members of this complex coalition.
Calderon can join the list of candidates that has already been reduced to it – both on the part of candidates who withdrew their candidacies, and on the part of a reduction of the committee. The current candidates are retired ambassadors Michael Oren and Danny Danon, former Diaspora Minister Omar Yankelevich, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan Nahum and former MK Michal Kotler Wench.
On the one hand there is an advantage to a candidate who arrives at the last minute: there is mostly positive momentum, and there is less time for a smear campaign. But in the case in question, Lapid did not pull out the long-awaited joker, and went for sure. Calderon will have to impress in zero time the ten committee members and the movements they represent. Tomorrow (Thursday) a number of the candidates are expected to be interviewed again before the committee members – some of whom are already complaining about such a long process that draws their time – with no expectation of completion.
If there are no last-minute surprises, the hope of the actual chairman of the Jewish Agency – Yaakov Hagoel, will be to complete this process by next February, when members of the organization’s board of trustees will convene. And had to return to the starting point.