UTJ chairman Yaakov Asher denies 'dramatic progress' in talks with change bloc

Yaakov Asher, the chairman of United Torah Judaism and a member of Israel's parliament, has rejected reports that his party had made dramatic progress in contacts with the parties of the so-called change bloc. Ynet reported that Asher said there was no basis whatsoever for those reports.

In a statement circulated on Israeli news channels, Asher went further than a simple denial. According to the text published by political commentator Amit Segal, Asher said that reports describing "dramatic" progress in the contacts and an "exchange of drafts" with his party had no foundation. He added that advice reaching his party from other parties was built on the same reports, which he called false and tendentious. The same statement was carried by N12, attributed to its reporter Eli Hirschman, and by News.co.il.

Who Yaakov Asher and United Torah Judaism are

United Torah Judaism, known in Israel by its Hebrew name Yahadut HaTorah, is the political home of much of Israel's Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community. It is an alliance of two factions, Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah, and its positions are shaped to a large degree by the rabbinic leadership those factions answer to. The party's priorities have long centred on issues such as the status of yeshiva students, funding for Haredi education and religious matters in public life.

Asher is identified in the statement as the party's chairman and as an MK, the standard Israeli abbreviation for a member of the Knesset, the country's parliament. His statement therefore speaks for the party leadership rather than for an individual backbencher.

What the change bloc is

The phrase "change bloc" is a label used in Israeli politics for the grouping of parties that have aligned against Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies. The term comes from the coalition that briefly governed Israel under Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, which drew together parties from the right, centre and left with little in common other than a wish to replace Netanyahu. Haredi parties, including United Torah Judaism, have in recent years been among Netanyahu's most consistent partners, which is why any report of serious contact between them and the change bloc draws attention.

What the denial covers

Asher's wording is specific. He did not, in the statement quoted by the outlets, say that no contacts exist. What he rejected was the description of those contacts as making "dramatic" progress and the claim that the two sides had been exchanging drafts, a phrase that in Israeli coalition politics usually suggests that written terms of an agreement are being negotiated. Ynet's own headline summary framed the statement as a denial of reports of dramatic progress with the change bloc, and a Ynet news alert likewise put the word dramatic in quotation marks.

The second part of the statement was aimed at other parties. Asher said that advice coming from them relied on the same reports he was denying. He did not name those parties or say what the advice was, and none of the outlets that carried the statement identified them.

How the statement spread

The statement appeared within a few minutes across several Hebrew-language news channels on the messaging service Telegram, including those of Amit Segal, a political analyst, N12, the news arm of one of Israel's main commercial television channels, and News.co.il, before Ynet published it as a news flash on its website. All of the versions carry identical wording.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports identifies which outlet or outlets first published the claims of dramatic progress and exchanged drafts that Asher denied. They do not say whether contacts between United Torah Judaism and the change bloc are taking place at all, or at what level. No response from any party in the change bloc has been reported, and Asher did not name the other parties whose advice he said rested on false reports, nor describe what that advice was.