For the First Time Ever, a Jewish-Christian Party Will Participate in Israel’s Election
A Jewish-Christian political party will be on the ballot for the first time in Israel’s next general election after the registrar recently approved the party.
Dennis Avi Lipkin founded the BibleBloc Party, which he says has been in the making for years.
“Our goal is to promote the Jewish-Christian alliance and togetherness,” Lipkin tells The Jerusalem Post. “For 2,000 years, Jews and Christians hated each other. When Israel faces an existential threat of Islamic terrorism, we need a Judeo-Christian love party.”
The Jerusalem Post reports the list will alternate between Jews and Christians, starting with Lipkin, followed by a Christian who lives in the Druse village of Usfiya. Part of the party’s platform will be to send Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel to speak on the country’s behalf around the world. The party will seek the support of non-Jewish Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their spouses and Christian Arabs.
“The Biblical bloc protects everyone who believes in the Bible and opposes the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from the land of Israel,” according to the Jewish Press. “The Biblical bloc represents parties all over the world who espouse Judeo-Christian, democratic Western culture.”
Esther Fleece Allen of Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem says, “It is good to see someone like Avi Lipkin recognizes the level of support that non Jews bring to the vitality of Israel. The Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem is committed to praying for all who seek the good of those who live in the Holy Land.”
The United States recently opened its embassy in Jerusalem to international protests.
The move was lauded as biblical prophetic fulfillment by many Christian leaders.
“We’re finally doing what we said we were going to do a quarter of a century ago and that is to move our embassy to Jerusalem. And then on another level is, I think America is coming into alignment with biblical truth. I mean this is, it doesn’t matter what the United States says—this is the capital Jerusalem. It was bought and paid for. David declared it to be the capital of Israel, and so I think we’re just coming into line and alignment with biblical truth,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin says.
Israel is run by the Knesset, or general assembly.
According to the official Knesset website:
Israel has an electoral system based on nation-wide proportional representation, and the number of seats which every list receives in the Knesset is proportional to the number of voters who voted for it. The only limitation is the 3.25 percent qualifying threshold. In other words, a party must receive at least 3.25 percent of the votes in order to be elected. According to this system, the voters vote for a party list, and not for a particular person on the list. Since the institution of the primaries system in some of the parties, these parties directly elect their candidates for the Knesset. Some of the parties elect their candidates via the party’s institutions. In the ultra-religious parties their spiritual leaders appoint the candidates. The Knesset elections take place once every four years, but the Knesset or the Prime Minister can decide to hold early elections, and under certain circumstances can serve for more than four years. …
The contest in the elections is among lists of candidates. Since the Parties Law was passed in 1992, only a party, which has been legally registered with the Party Registrar, or an alignment of two or more registered parties, which have decided to run in the elections together, can present a list of candidates and participate in the elections. …
The candidates of any given list are elected to the Knesset on the basis of the order in which they appear on it. If a certain party received sufficient votes for 10 seats, the first 10 candidates on its list will enter the Knesset. If a Knesset member passes away or resigns his seat in the Knesset for whatever reason, the next on the list will replace him/her.
