Since the indictment of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Thursday, the Likud party has slipped in the polls and seemingly lost its footing, leading some pundits to spot political blood in the water. But ask Zev Elkin, minister of environment and Jerusalem affairs and number 12 on the Likud list, and he’ll tell you that reports of the party’s demise are premature.

“It is clear that the battle between the right-wing bloc and the left-wing bloc is very close, but I still would caution not to take the polls too seriously,” said Elkin, who had recently returned from Moscow, where he served as translator and aide to Netanyahu in meetings with President Vladimir Putin. “I will remind you that in 2015, in the week before the vote, most surveys showed 20 mandates for the Likud and 24 for the Zionist Union, headed by Yitzchak Herzog and Tzipi Livni. As we know, the end result was 30 for Likud and 24 for Zionist Union. The Likud campaign is only being launched this week, and I believe we will win.”

Elkin, who studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion after he immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine in 1990, further said that Likud is likely to form a coalition government with the chareidi parties once elected into power, contrary to reports that the party will seek a coalition with the Blue and White party, led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid.

“The Likud has always preferred to establish a coalition where the chareidi parties are a component,” he told me. “When establishing the coalition of this outgoing Knesset, we established a narrow coalition with the right-wing parties and the chareidim. It had just 61 members, but we preferred a narrow coalition, whose members were more in tune with us and were loyal to the government, over a wider government that would exclude the chareidi parties. In other words, if the Likud forms the next government, it will be with the chareidi parties.”

But the fear that chareidi critic Yair Lapid may rise to power in the next elections has some chareidi voters contemplating casting a ballot for Likud. That’s a mistake, said Rabbi Yisrael Eichler, an MK with United Torah Judaism. “Any chareidi who votes for the Likud will elect them to Knesset against us,” Eichler said. “The Likud is a coalition partner but cannot be a home for chareidim. It’s a secular party since the days of [Ze’ev] Jabotinsky, who was an enemy of the chareidim and suggested negating the right to vote for those with beards and peyos. There are still people on the [Likud] list, in realistic places, who are more suited for Yesh Atid.”

Poll results since Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced that Netanyahu would be indicted in three different investigations show the left-center-Arab bloc drawing 61 seats, while the right-chareidi bloc would win 59. In particular, polls showed that the Blue and White Party would win 37 mandates, followed by the Likud with 29. The New Right headed by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked would win seven, as would United Torah Judaism. The Labor Party under Avi Gabbay would get six, as would Shas. Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party draws five seats while Yisrael Beitenu, headed by former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, is struggling to reach the electoral threshold, as is Jewish Home.

That last detail is particularly worrisome for one Likud insider, who said that even if Likud draws more than 30 seats, its traditional partners, like Yisrael Beitenu and Jewish Home, may not make it into the Knesset. “That makes it harder for us in the Likud to draft an election strategy. If we explain to the voters of these parties that they have to vote for the Likud because their little party doesn’t pass the threshold, then we will have more MKs, but we won’t be able to establish a government without these parties. That might mean ‘drinking’ more mandates, but from a cup full of poison, so to speak.”

Tellingly, Blue and White party members also said they expect the Likud to recover from the shock of the indictment. A bloc that prevents Netanyahu from forming a government is still not a Gantz government, they told me. Members of their camp, like left-wing party Meretz, are also hovering near the electoral threshold. A small change in the vote would flip the electoral map.

In the meantime, the UTJ is standing behind the prime minister as he endures what MK Eichler termed the “legal tyranny and the injustice of the coup” arrayed against him.

But that does not justify any chareidi voter rebelling against what he called “his parents, siblings, and children who are being crushed by decrees of the secular authorities,” and deciding to vote for a secular party. “That is even if the Likud is less awful than the anti-religious, left-wing parties.”

Fellow UTJ MK Rabbi Uri Maklev stressed that the Likud regularly proposes and enacts initiatives that are anathema to chareidi voters. “The Likud initiates legislation that violates Jewish tradition, the purity of the home, and Shabbos observance,” he said. Maklev insisted that UTJ voters are “voters with values” and said the party will be launching a campaign in the coming weeks that will explain how the chareidi parties are “faithful and stable partners” to the right-wing bloc to clarify that “anyone who votes for UTJ is also supporting right-wing rule.”

In the Know

What exactly happens in the room when the door closes and it’s just Binyamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin sitting face to face?

Zev Elkin is one of the few to actually know. On the prime minister’s last trip to Moscow, he served as Netanyahu’s second translator — the one who verifies what the first is saying. That’s how important every syllable is in these discussions.

“The prime minister really did ask me once if I was being fully accurate in my translation,” said Elkin, chuckling. “It was said in jest, because I asked him if he was happy with the results after we finished talks with Putin. He said that he was and I told him, ‘That’s what’s important.’”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 751)