Posted on 12/03/2003 2:39:18 PM PST by Alouette
Only three days after the Meretz council voted to form a new social-democratic party called Ya'ad, the Meretz Knesset faction will convene on Wednesday to decide whether to change the party's name again – because it sounds too much like "Yad," which is the Russian word for poison.
Shortly after former Meretz leader Yossi Sarid and probable leadership candidate Yossi Beilin decided on the name on Sunday night, Meretz's Russian immigrant MK, Roman Bronfman, wrote an urgent letter begging an immediate name change. Bronfman met in Geneva on Monday with Beilin and received a commitment from him to replace the name.
Bronfman told Beilin that the Russian ear cannot distinguish between Ya'ad and Yad. Labor MK Colette Avital pointed out that Yad means hell in Romanian.
And hell is exactly where top Meretz officials said they want to send the renegade Bronfman, who has not decided yet whether to join the new party but is already dictating its nomenclature.
"Bronfman decided by himself to change the name of the party with no authority whatsoever," one Meretz official said. "We selected a name in Hebrew, not in Russian or Romanian. It's Ya'ad and not Yad, which means hand in Hebrew. We may have to let him feel a hand across his face."
Instead of Ya'ad, which means target in Hebrew, Bronfman suggested that the new party be called Yi'ud, which can be translated as destiny, mission, and promise. The former name is an acronym for Democratic Working Israel, while the new name stands for Democratic And Working Israel. Bronfman said Yi'ud, which means Jewish in Russian, will broadcast to Russian voters that the party is not anti-religious.
The name Yi'ud will evoke bad memories for the Right, because it was the name of the party that MKs Gonen Segev, Alex Goldfarb, and Esther Salmoviz formed in 1994 when they broke off from Tsomet.
Segev joined the Rabin government as a minister and Goldfarb as a deputy minister. The Right accused Segev and Goldfarb of betraying the right-wing voters who elected them by providing the two votes needed for the Oslo II Accord to pass by a one-vote majority of 61-59. Yi'ud folded shortly thereafter.
Glam politics - it's just ugly.
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