MK Sharren Haskel alleged in a sworn affidavit that members of the New Hope-United Right faction were required to film themselves voting for Michael Rabello as state comptroller and show the footage to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as proof of how they voted.
The claim conflicts with the position presented by the Likud during the legal proceedings over Rabello’s election. It was not, however, submitted in that case.
Haskel signed the affidavit on Sunday, more than two weeks after the High Court of Justice invalidated Rabello’s election and ordered the Knesset to hold a new vote because the filming of ballots had fundamentally violated the secrecy of the election.
Instead, the affidavit was filed in Haskel’s separate petition seeking permission to break away from Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope-United Right faction and be recognized as a one-member faction.
Haskel spoke out about filming scandal prior to High Court ruling
Haskel had publicly said on June 14, while the Rabello case was still before the court, that coalition lawmakers had been required to photograph themselves behind the voting curtain. She also said at the time that the matter should be examined by the court. She did not submit the affidavit now before the court, or otherwise place its more specific allegation concerning Netanyahu, before the justices deciding the Rabello petitions.
The High Court consequently ruled without considering her account. Her allegation has not been tested in the Rabello proceedings, and the affidavit does not reopen the case, which ended with the cancellation of the election on July 2.
In the affidavit, Haskel argued that New Hope had not formulated an independent position ahead of the comptroller election and had held no faction meeting to decide which candidate to support.
Instead, she said, Rabello was presented as the Likud candidate whom New Hope members were required to support “without reservation and without the possibility of expressing an independent position.”
“During the repeat round of voting, members of the New Hope faction were required to document their votes by filming themselves and to present the documentation to the prime minister, a member of the Likud faction, as evidence of how they voted,” she wrote.
The statement does not identify who issued the alleged instruction, whether Netanyahu knew about it in advance, whether Haskel herself recorded her ballot or whether any footage was ultimately shown to him.
Likud denies that lawmakers were ordered to document votes
Haskel’s affidavit contradicts the Likud’s broader insistence that lawmakers were not ordered to document their votes, but it does not establish that Netanyahu personally gave the instruction.
During the Rabello proceedings, the Knesset argued that there was no concrete evidence that a filming directive had been issued, while coalition MKs who published photographs of their ballots said they had acted voluntarily.
Haskel’s affidavit was submitted for a different purpose: to support her argument that New Hope had ceased functioning independently and was effectively operating under the Likud’s authority following Sa’ar’s political return to the party.
