Winds of optimism were blowing through the crowded headquarters of Shelly Yachimovich's camp in the basement of Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center. Carried along by the tail wind of this summer's social protests, the social democrat candidate wandered between the Labor voting booths, and breathed some life into even in the sleepiest of branches. Accompanied by her "Red Army," the hardcore members of her younger supporters, along with 5,000 activists and loyal workers from headquarters, she hopes to restore Labor to its past glory and revive Israel's socialist party. At the end of the day, however, she didn't let the disappointing result hold her back. Now she's in the determining battle, against Peretz. "I'm Ratz, I'm Ratz," muttered author Yoram Kaniuk, leaning on a walking stick, a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, just before slipping his ballot for Shelly Yachimovich into the ballot box at Labor's Tel Aviv Zamenhof branch. Then he explained his choice. "All these years I've voted for Ratz (the Movement for Civil Rights and Peace), but now I'm here because of Shelly. I believe in her and she can do many good and important things." Kaniuk goes outside and is swallowed up by Yachimovich's Red Army. Yachimovich gives him a big hug and he tells her he wants her to win. This is what's happening on the morning of election day for a new Labor party leader, way before things got really tense. There are difficult times in the struggle, with the morning's optimism replaced by a nerve-wracking evening, at the end of which she and her supporters went home slightly disappointed but determined to win in next week's second round. I accompanied her during election time and Sisyphean work around the clock. There were also moments of loneliness, far away from the thousands of supporters, who didn't know how excited she is to run for the same Labor leader seat as her predecessors David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and others. The Red Army is ready Yachimovich, 51, is dressed in black. She's the daughter of Chana and Moshe, Holocaust survivors from Poland. She was an administrative officer in the army and then a hard-hitting journalist before entering the swamp of politics six years ago. She is completely in charge of things at her packed party headquarters in the Dizengoff Center basement. On Sunday afternoon, she tells her activists that things are great, but no one should think it's in the bag. She says that it's a tough battle that must be won in the first round. She's got a lot of energy flowing. "We have the chance to win in the first round. There's good energy, ideological commitment, everything's great and the big fight is between Amir Peretz and me. We have to convince people to vote for me. Then maybe we can be as happy as we are now later tonight," she says on election eve. The next day comes the real thing. The big branch of the Labor Party is located on Tel Aviv's Zamenhof Street. Yehudit Drori, 69, opens the branch at 8 a.m. and awaits the big day. At nine, Yachimovich's election observers take up position. Paranoia plays a part in the party, and the observers check that their candidate has at least as many voting slips as Peretz. There's plenty of tension and emotion which no forced smile can conceal. Outside, Yachimovich's "Red Army" is already preparing itself some 25 loud, energetic young people. Among them are heads of the student unions at various campuses, veterans of the tents of the Rothschild Boulevard struggle for social justice, who now follow her from branch to branch. They hold up banners and scream into every available microphone "Welfare State" and "The People Want Social Justice." Rona Orovano, chairwoman of the Bezalel Academy's Student Union, Itai Gotler, chairman of the students union at Hebrew University, his second-in-command Yael Sinai and their friends go wild when Yachimovich turns up to vote at Zamenhof at around 10:15 a.m. There's a very long line at this branch, perhaps because of Yachimovich's natural ties to matters of social justice, or perhaps the social-democratic platform upon which she based her whole campaign. The candidate surprises the sweaty media on hand and simply waits her turn. "Five thousand of my volunteers are currently spread out in the field. There's no doubt that the social justice protest gave us some momentum. Like Begin said: 'One ballot, and then another and another.' The public has to come out and vote. That's the only way we'll be able to celebrate tonight, she says. Election day is exhausting, but Yachimovich tells her Red Army they mustn't rest for a moment. They pack up their stuff quickly to race over to the Brodetsky branch in Ramat Aviv, but a moment before that they run into Eli Asis, the only Amir Peretz supporter who opened a stand at Zamenhof and who tells everyone that they have to vote for Peretz because "he created the Iron Dome," the anti-rocket system. Asis makes an interesting comparison between Peretz and Yachimovich. "It's like David's battle against Goliath. In the end, the little guy wins. Here too, David played here by Amir will beat Shelly, who's Goliath," he insists. Near the Brodetsky branch, a local green grocer expresses surprise. "For years, things have been dead around here, and now there are cheers as if Hapoel Tel Aviv scored the championship goal at Bloomfield" soccer stadium. "You'll see, this little woman will beat that guy with the big moustache, as well as that son of President Herzog," he declares. Tail winds from the protest This past summer was colored by the colors of the social protest and the public's demand for social justice. Yachimovich knows that it came at the best possible moment, especially inside her own party. That same party, which was considered a dead horse, suddenly looks completely different. It has been running a fairly colorful elections campaign, full of drive, and most importantly offering an alternative to Kadima. Brig.-Gen. (res.) Chen Yitzhaki of Modi'in, a tall, smiling fellow and former IDF division commander heads Yachimovich's situation room. When she rushes to Ashdod's Rehov Habana'im that afternoon to energize her activists, he keeps following the data in the field and reports to her that things are good, and that people are voting. "We're making nice progress, I hope we won't be missing 350 votes to pass 40 percent" needed not to have a second round, he tells her in the afternoon. Later he shares a secret with Opher Kornfeld, who heads up headquarters, a former high-tech exec who sold his company to Comverse for many millions and switched over to politics. In the past, Kornfeld played a dominant role in Peretz's campaign, but now he's with Shelly, and he's dying to beat his former candidate in the first round. Five hours before the voting booths close, Yachimovich is already not smiling as she did in the morning. Perhaps the figures on the voting rate, which right now is at about 30 percent, are what are eating her, or it's just a momentary drop in energy from all the other days of the campaign which she ran so impressively. She's wiped out, maybe even worried. These are the difficult moments in which she looks so alone. She looks more human, emotional and someone with whom you can empathize. She chooses a corner of her basement headquarters and sits with Tal Alexandrovitz Segev, her campaign manager. "You look exhausted," I say. "That's true but it doesn't really help me when people tell me that," she responds. She recovers in a few minutes. "I have some incredible people here with me. Wise socialists who are always Zionists, and the kind of people who really love the country and care about it a lot. This is a new amazing generation, these people who have been with me for six years. They've helped me in Knesset struggles and they see society not through a prism of right and left but rather through the eyes of a just and ethical society. These are deep social-democratic people, and let's not get confused: we're talking about the peace camp not the radical left, but moderate and pragmatic people," says Yachimovich. Then she goes up to the main hall to encourage the dozens of volunteers not to stop making calls for a minute to more potential voters. In the field itself there are more than a few problems. Amichai, one of Yachimovich's main activists, claims that the Bedouin tribe Abu Korinat pulled a fast one on Yachimovich's observer. "Our representative was there at 9 a.m. They told him that the voting booth was in a certain location, and in the end it was a ghost town, and his contact person had suddenly disappeared. In the end he found the Labor branch at 11 a.m., and strangely, 45 people had already voted there. He's been there for hours now, and barely four people showed up," Amichai said. He said they sent observers to 55 voting booths in the Arab sector to prevent forgeries, but the reports from there indicated everything was fine." Fifteen minutes before the end of voting, and the tension is at its peak. One of the activists calls Kibbutz Ein Hashofet and speaks to a potential Yachimovich voter. The woman says she's sick, and too tired to go vote even if they arranged transportation for her in the kibbutz. That's when "Casper," otherwise known as Amir Elstein, 33, who runs the big hall of telephone callers, steps in. Elstein, an educator by profession, who was also involved in the Rothschild tent protest, grabs the phone and manages to find a man with a moped. A few moments later that same woman is voting, minutes before the polls close. Later he gets a phone call from a Jerusalem man wearing a knitted kippah who tells him that the situation in the city looks good for Shelly. "Every vote is important. Who knows, maybe it will be the deciding one. Maybe that woman will lead to Shelly's victory," Elstein says. They come out of love At 10 p.m. the voting is over. Within minutes they're folding up the chairs and putting away the phones. Dozens of Yachimovich supporters now nervously await the results. (She won 32 percent of the vote; Peretz won 31%, and the runoff election is scheduled for Wednesday.) They worked long months for her. Yehuda Gold (60) of Shoham works for the postal service and says that Shelly gave him back the energy and love of the party. "Amir's supporters come with trucks, trailers and the Iron Dome," Gold says. "We come out of love, on foot, we want a new social order. I really love Shelly, she will bring us more than 21 mandates and today she'll take it with 40.5 percent. In the end we will celebrate here with a cup of Coke. When she turns 80, she'll be just like Menachem Begin still modest, with a small apartment, still the same old Shelly everybody knows." Updates with the data from the field are shown on a huge screen in the situation room. Yachimovich is down below in the basement, and her assistant Laura doesn't let anyone get near her. Chen says that his data is better than what the media is reporting. But the results on TV show Shelly's red election percentage doesn't overcome Peretz's blue slice, as they had expected it would at headquarters. As the minutes go by they understand there that there will be a second round, and the faces look a little more worried and tense. Politics isn't the cleanest thing in the world, and there are already activists muttering about another candidate's forgeries. Chen says he's still calm and won't stop smiling. At a quarter to one in the morning, Yachimovich has 33 percent, Peretz 28, and now it's clear there's a lot of hard work ahead in the next 10 days before the second round of voting. Yachimovich arrives and her supporters, one of them President Shimon Peres' granddaughter, greet her with the cheer: "Look who's coming, it's the prime minister." Yachimovich is realistic. "We didn't win in the first round. We will gird our loins and we'll win it in the second. I call on everyone to vote, even those backing Buji (Isaac Herzog) and Amram Mitzna. This matter will be determined by the public, and they must show up. This was a historic summer. We want a social-democratic party that doesn't zigzag, which is obligated to the public and which will be a clear alternative to the Netanyahu government," she says. She hugs her supporters and tells them how much she loves them. "Now you'll hear all kinds of spin from Amir's people, but you are free people and free to vote for whoever you please," she tells the activists. "I will also bring the Labor Party many more mandates. You are amazing people you do everything voluntarily, with faith, and you're far superior to Amir's people." It's already 3 a.m. The Dizengoff Center stores have long closed. The streets are deserted. The head of Yachimovich's situation room comes out of his room for almost the first time all night. Chen is almost not smiling anymore. He looks exhausted. He knows that in just a few hours he will return to Shelly's big battle for Labor Party chairwoman, leading up to the final decision next Wednesday.
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