MK Zandberg chosen to lead Meretz
Chosen to lead the left-wing social-democratic party, MK Tamar Zandberg slams both Netanyahu and the Zionist Union, asserting under her leadership, 'Meretz will lead a revolution.'
MK Tamar Zandberg was elected Thursday by a large majority to lead the Meretz political party, with 71.12 percent of the vote.
Former head of Peace Now Avi Buskila, Zandberg's most backed competitor, got 28.48% of the vote.
A total of 17,031 party members voted, 54 percent of the total amount of the party's members.
Following the withdrawal of Gal-On and MK Ilan Gilon from the race, MK Zandberg and Buskila remained the main candidates to lead the party.
Buskila congratulated Zandberg on her win, complimenting her by stating she is "a worthy leader" to the party.
Thanking her voters, Zandberg stressed they should not celebrate her victory, but the return of her party to true political significance.
"In the past two months something amazing has happened here; we have returned to believing in ourselves, we have returned to the political arena, we have become the alternative (to the Likud—ed)—starting tomorrow morning, Meretz will lead a revolution," she said in a speech after her win.
She added that she had met with Buskila before her speech and "complimented him on a respectable and fair campaign that he conducted" and assured his voters "that Meretz will be our home and together we will turn it into a party that we dreamed of."
Zandberg continued by thanking Zehava Gal-On, the party's outgoing chairperson, praising her as a "model of leadership and public courage" in a time of social apathy, stating she is privileged to stand where she once stood.
Speaking directly to the Israeli public, Zandberg attacked incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming he "turned human rights organizations into a punching bag, he pursues them just like Putin."
Then, addressing Israeli-Arabs directly, she told them to vote for her party as the government fdoes not represent them, gibing Netanyahu for his comment during the 2015 elections, when he warned that "Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves" to spur the Israeli public to vote for a right-wing government.
"The government has ostracized you, come to us on buses because we believe in public transportation," she said.
But it wasn't just the right Zandberg was criticizing.
The Zionist Union, a left-wing opposition party, was deemed by her to be acting like "Netanyahu's bodyguards." She said the Union has not represented the Left in Israel for a long time now, and invited their voters to join them.
"Together we will prove to Netanyahu who said it is impossible to beat him in the ballots—you are corrupt and in elections you can be beaten," she concluded. "We will lead the leftist bloc."
Meretz, a social-democratic and green political party in the opposition, currently has five seats in the Knesset, as opposed to the current strongest part in the coalition, the Likud, which has six times as many.
