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Leftist Knesset member: Israelis want social justice but vote Netanyahu

In an interview with Al-Monitor, left-wing Knesset member Dov Khenin describes the essential Israeli political incoherence, where the Israeli public calls for social justice while voting for capitalist, right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
An Israeli man prays after eating lunch in a soup kitchen in Jerusalem March 20, 2006. Growing Israeli poverty, as illustrated by the hundreds of soup kitchens opening up nationwide in the last few years, is a prominent issue in Israel's campaign for a March 28 parliamentary election.  REUTERS/Yonathan Weitzman - RTR17FHL
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A status posted by Knesset member Dov Khenin on his Facebook page on April 17, succeeded in garnering some 6,000 shares. Khenin, a much-esteemed, combative social justice activist, belongs to the Hadash Party — the only Jewish-Arab party in the Knesset. In his post, which almost instantly became the hottest thing on the Israeli net, Khenin called for raising minimum wages from NIS 23 ($6.61) an hour to NIS 30 ($8.62) an hour. In sharp, incisive language, Khenin explained that this was a vital social justice battle to minimize the “working poor” phenomenon and so that “workers here won’t be slaves.”

In an approximate Facebook calculation, about half a million people were exposed to Khenin’s call to arms. This is way beyond the public interest exhibited in the talks with the Palestinians, even when compared to the very popular Facebook page of Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett.

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