Israel Bar Association leadership election candidates urged attorneys to vote as polling stations opened on Tuesday morning.
20.6% of attorneys eligible to vote have done so as of 1:45 p.m., the Bar said, a turnout nearly five times higher than at the same time in the association’s previous elections.
Politicians made last-minute declarations of support for their preferred candidates for chairmanship and committee membership. Opposition head Yair Lapid and National Unity MK Gideon Sa’ar issued support for interim Bar chairman Amit Becher. Lapid said it was important also to support Becher’s “Hope for the Bar” list as it was the members of the Bar’s National Council that elected representatives to the Judicial Selection Committee.
Sa’ar wish Becher success and said that the elections are “part of the campaign for the fundamental values of the State of Israel.”
Becher also championed his list’s run as a means to “restore honor to the profession, to protect the independence of the legal system.”
Deputy Bar chairman Itzhak Natovich’s Zionist Legal Initiative list received the backing of the Religious Zionist Party on Monday night, with MKs Simcha Rothman and Bezalel Smotrich appearing alongside the list’s members in a video.
Israeli lawyers cast their ballot for the head of the Israeli Bar Association, at a voting station at the Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem, June 20, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)“We call on all members of the national camp: Go vote,” said Smotrich.
The list urged voters to engage in their democratic right as soon as possible, as most polls closed at 5 p.m., and there were long queues.
Efi Nave tours southern Israel on Bar election day
Former Bar head Efi Nave visited polling stations in Beersheba and Ashdod, answering questions from prospective voters.
Nave received a literal blessing for his run from the director of the Beersheba and Eilat court, Rabbi Yitzhak Dahan.
“I want to bless my beloved friend Efi Nave,” said Dahan. “May God aid him.”
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