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Whose home is it anyway? By Nadav Shragai The interim balance - profit versus loss - of the new-old brand on the right: Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) is showing a mixed trend. This "home," as even its builders from the National Union-National Religious Party admit, was built way too late, only after it had become clear to the Knesset members that their voters do not like the infighting and the schisms and are threatening to stray from them at the polling station, and only after the opening shot of the election campaign had been fired. Now, the party is trying to gather under its wing traditional religious Zionism and to position itself as a party that breaks through sectoral boundaries, a party of which the top priorities are Jewish identity, education and society. The nearly explicit aim is to shake off the image of a party whose main banner is the land of Israel, thus expanding its ranks. Advertisement However, along the way to its new identity the new party has lost Aryeh Eldad, one of the right's more eloquent spokesmen. Though Eldad is the ultimate articulator of the line from which - as far as image goes - the Jewish Home would like to distance itself, the traditional - secular Eldad is also a figure who to some extent broke the uniform hue of the crochet skullcaps in the outgoing Knesset, and relinquishing him might well turn out to have been a bad bargain. Eldad is not going home, but rather is joining Hatikva - "the secular alternative to the religious ideological right." It is hard to believe that Hatikva will make it past the cutoff point for entering the Knesset (today, enough votes for three Knesset seats) and this means: the loss of tens of thousands of votes for Habayit Hayehudi. Not only Hatikva is likely to lose votes for the right. When MK Zvi Hendel said the new party will be a home for everyone, except for those whose are glad when Arab blood is spilled and when a Jewish settlement is evacuated - he eliminated part of Meimad and the Kahane extremists. The significance is quite clear here too: Baruch Marzel and the Jewish Front people who have decided to run for the Knesset will also "contribute" tens of thousands of votes from the right to the basket of lost votes. From their perspective, after all, "Running is a statement, even if we don't get into the Knesset." Rabbi Zalman Melamed has indeed called upon the public council that selects and ranks the Habayit Hayehudi candidates for the Knesset "to assign representation to those who stand at the extremes - from Kahane to Meimad," but the mood in the council indicates that at least Marzel - Kahane's successor - will not be in. Yaakov Amidror, the head of the council, has already hinted in this direction when he made it clear that "lawbreakers cannot represent Judaism." So who, then, is inside? The social face and the issue of Jewish identity that Habayit Hayehudi would like to put at the center of its agenda bring up names of a coloration different from that which has characterized the Knesset list until now. Thus, for example, mention is being made of Dr. Aliza Lavie of Bar-Ilan Univeristy, a lecturer on communications, a researcher of Jewish women's writings and an activist in the Kolech group of Orthodox feminists; Yehiel Tropper, one of the founders of the Maagalei Tzedek social movement; Elhanan Glatt, the chief executive of the Bnai Akiva yeshivas and Liora Minka, the chairwoman of the Emunah national religious women's movement. Among the names mentioned for the "secular slot" are Danny Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council or settlements and Major General (ret.) Yiftah Ron-Tal, formerly an inhabitant of Ofra and commander of the ground forces who, with his thundering resignation from the Israel Defense Forces in 2006, expressed harsh criticism of the disengagement. More predictable names are those of Orit Struk of Hebron, the chairwoman of Human Rights in Judea and Samaria and Sar Shalom Jerbi, the secretary general of the national Religious Party and a close associate of MK Zevulun Orlev. Orlev, incidentally, has already defined failure as three to five Knesset seats and success as an achievement that makes Habayit Hayehudi the third-largest party. The public opinion polls, at this stage, are giving the party only six or seven Knesset seats, not far from the "failure" and very far from the "achievement." One of the target audiences for the new party is veteran Shas voters and their offspring, who in the glory days of the NRP voted for it. The assessment is that there are about three or four Knesset seats around this seam line between the NRP and Shas. One of the more difficult problems for the public council that has been delegated to select the candidates for the Kensset will be to find a sufficiently attractive figure who will be able to compete with the attractions of Shas and its spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and offer the Sephardic religious public something different. On Sunday evening, the public council of Habayit Hayehudi headed, by Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, voted to reject the recommendations of the party's MKs to hold open primaries for the position of its chairman. The decision, as one of the members has testified, was taken with mixed feelings - "We decided with the mind, not with the heart," said the member. The mind decided against the proposal, mainly because of the fear of a clash among the three candidates: MKs Zevulun Orlev, Uri Ariel and Binyamin Elon, a clash that would burn down the "home" even before it is established, hurt the party's campaign and interfere with the main effort in the direction of the general elections. The heart was in favor, because this is a new political brand that has to demonstrate openness and public involvement in putting together the list. The compromise: The public will be able to vote for the nominees, including the candidate for the position of chairperson, by means of a virtual "vote" at the party's Web site. The council has promised to take public opinion into account, but not necessarily to abide by it. Bookmark to del.icio.us   The 'beauty machine' Want to optimize your looks without radically altering them? now you can. Lebanon needs unity Khamenei to Lebanese President: Iran will always stand beside Lebanon.

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