Neither finals nor a strained bank account are going to deter Merav Zafary, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student, from flying to Israel to vote for Labor’s Ehud Barak.
Ordinarily, she’d have to fork out approximately $1,200 for a round-trip plane ticket to Israel. The Jewish state allows only government workers abroad to cast absentee ballots.
But for this election, Zafary bought a ticket to her homeland for less than half the usual price. Kesher USA, a makeshift agency established just for the upcoming election, subsidized the rest.
Udi Behr, a spokesperson for Kesher, claimed the New York-based agency is not political and won’t tell Israelis who to vote for. “We don’t screen people,” he said. “All Israelis have a democratic right to determine who will lead us to the next millennium.”
But by targeting students — who are largely liberal — and other Israelis who can’t afford a regular-priced ticket, the agency may subtly influence a tight race.
In the last election for prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu won by a 1-percent margin, or some 30,000 votes. Behr said that Netanyahu received a major boost from thousands of fervently religious Jews, mostly from New York, who had Israeli citizenship and flew there just to vote.
“I think [Kesher’s offer] is really for the peace camp people,” Zafary said. “It will help counterbalance the Orthodox flying to Israel to vote for the right.”
In this year’s unpredictable election, a few thousand swing votes, plus a few thousand more from previously untapped voters abroad, could make the difference.
Zafary isn’t taking any chances.
“I’m willing to spend the money to not have Netanyahu elected,” she said. “I know every vote counts. I’m trying to get as many people here to vote as possible. It will make me feel better that I did something.”
Zafary has eight people so far interested in the Kesher tickets. Einat Benvenisti, a Berkeley resident, has 10.
Benvenisti also wants to unseat Netanyahu, and will probably vote for Barak. “Things in Israel need to go back to sanity,” she said. “We need someone who can put the judicial system in order, give budgets to education and health, and limit money going to the extreme right.”
Benvenisti added, “If things don’t change, eventually when my family goes back it will be so different I won’t want to raise my kids there.”
Kesher’s tickets from San Francisco cost $550. Prices may change depending on how many sign up. Approximately 100 people from the Bay Area have signed up so far, Behr said. Special El Al flights from New York to Israel are already booked by the group, which may charter flights from the Bay Area to New York.
Kesher’s flights are planned for the second round of elections in June, but could change if that round appears unnecessary. Participants can spend up to two weeks in Israel before returning to the Untied States, Behr said.
Prospective voters must furnish their Israeli identity card numbers, which will be checked against a voter registration list. Behr said Kesher has some 2,500 people signed up and hopes to amass 5,000 by election time.
News of the trip has been spread by word of mouth and in scattered newspaper ads in the United States.
Kesher has raised over $1 million through anonymous donations to subsidize the flights and continues to accept monetary gifts, Behr said.
Tali Margalit, a law student at U.C. Berkeley, will also take advantage of the cheap tickets to chalk up a vote for Barak. Lamenting that she has no choice but to “calculate voting in terms of money,” she nevertheless decided it’s worth it.
“It’s problematic that someone can live all his life in Brooklyn and just come to Israel a few weeks and vote,” Margalit said, referring to fervently religious Jews who can vote under Israel’s citizenship laws. “People who were born in Israel, and see themselves first as Israeli citizens, sometimes can’t vote simply because of money.”
The timing, however, couldn’t be worse for Margalit and Zafary, who have finals on the week of elections and must juggle their schedules to accommodate the trip.
Yet neither wants to feel the way Benvenisti did during the 1996 Israel elections — stuck in California, frustrated and disappointed.
“Just the Israelis residing in the Bay Area could have changed the whole thing,” Benvenisti said.
“My conscience needs to be clear. I’m spreading the word as a private crusade; no one is telling me to do it. The only way I can influence is by sending people to vote.”
Israelis can sign up for tickets over the Web at www.kesherusa.org or by fax at (212) 966-3907.