Likud Anglos to use AIPAC model in Knesset lobbying day

Delegation will meet with ministers, deputy ministers and MKs who are running for leadership of Likud institutions in election.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Knesset building 390 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Knesset building 390
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
There will not be thousands of people lobbying Knesset members on Wednesday, as happens in Congress every year on the final day of the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC.
But the dozen immigrants from English-speaking countries coming to the Knesset to speak to Likud MKs about issues important to them is a start. The AIPAC-style lobby day is organized by Likud Anglos, which has formed a caucus in the newly elected Likud central committee to advance issues that are important to native English speakers in Israel.
“Likud Anglos is supposed to be modeled after AIPAC, not in terms of its policies or principles but its strategy and its success,” said Likud Anglos director Daniel Tauber, who was recently elected to the central committee.
The delegation will be meeting with ministers, deputy ministers and MKs who are running for the leadership of Likud institutions in an election that is expected to be held in May.
Tauber listed four key categories of issues that will be on the delegation’s agenda in their lobbying effort: Maintaining the current system for selecting the party’s MKs; keeping the Likud loyal to its ideology and the land of Israel; making the party more democratic and efficient; and issues specific to the Anglo community.
The Likud activists will ask the MKs to ease the process of immigrant professionals’ certification in their fields, improve the quality of life in Israel, and make the electoral system more accountable and constituency oriented. The activists favor electing part of the Knesset via direct, regional elections.
Regarding the system for electing the Likud’s Knesset slate, the Anglos have taken an unpopular position in the central committee. MKs have estimated that some 75 percent of central committee members want to be given the right to select the party’s MKs, a task currently in the hands of the entire Likud membership.