Arab rights group lampoons Lieberman in ad campaign

Yisrael Beiteinu has abandoned many of the most significant promises it made to its voters before the elections, an Israeli Arab rights organization alleged yesterday in a new ad campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of the rightist party.

The Mossawa Center, an Israeli Arab rights organization, claimed that Yisrael Beiteinu surrendered to demands by ultra-Orthodox parties to drop a bill it proposed that would legalize civil unions as an alternative to religious marriages.

The group lampooned Yisrael Beiteinu's election campaign slogan of "no loyalty, no citizenship," aimed at requiring Israeli Arabs to take an oath of loyalty to the state, and replaced it with "no loyalty, no civil union."

The ads will feature the image of party leader Avigdor Lieberman juxtaposed with that of Eli Yishai, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.

"The poster serves as a reminder to Russian voters that Lieberman is not loyal to his voters," Mossawa said yesterday.

The posters will be placed in mixed cities like Acre with large populations of Russian immigrants. Civil unions are important to many of Lieberman's Russian immigrant voters, which make up the core of the party's followers, because they feel the Jewish religious establishment controlled by the ultra-Orthodox community discriminates against them and questions their ties to Judaism.