Judea and Samaria leaders affiliated with Likud – Yisrael Beytenu are asking the party to stop its negative campaign against the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) and Zionist rabbis. Samaria Regional Authority head Gershon Mesika and Gush Etzion Regional Authority head Davidi Perl co-signed a letter Thursday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in which they protested against the Likud's ongoing campaign against the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home). They wrote, "We, the heads of regional authorities in Judea and Samaria, Likud members who signed the public call to support Likud Beytenu in the elections only last week … on behalf of Likud activists from communities all over Israel, we turn to you out of deep concern, and ask you to give instructions to stop the campaign of attacks against the sister-party Bayit Yehudi immediately, [the party] which in your own words is 'a natural partner' [of Likud]." "In recent weeks we are sorry to have seen repeated attacks against elements in the national camp and the religious public. This trend has reached peak levels in recent days, with publications that demean the leading rabbis of religious Zionism, a matter that we cannot and will not ignore. "This is a mistake as a matter of principle, because it creates an atmosphere of division within the nationalist camp, and it is also damaging on the practical level because it obviously erodes our party's achievements in the elections. The Israeli nation has clearly shifted to the right, and it expects us, of all people, to continue taking positive steps to advance the values of Zionism and settlement. Mesika and Perl called on Netanyahu to state publicly that he will add the Bayit Yehudi to his next government. "On a day in which Shelly Yachimovich announces that she will not sit in the next Netanyahu government," they summed up, "the right thing to do is not to play into the hands of the media and the Left with internal division, but rather to state that after the elections we will strive with all our might to establish a coalition with our 'natural' partners."
