I think Haifa residents’ first shock came when Einat Kalish-Rotem was interviewed just a month after having been elected as their mayor, replacing Yona Yahav. Voters who brought her into office were hoping for something new.
And they certainly did get something new.
I was at the Shabbat-Tarbut (Saturday interview programme) held at Beit Abba Hushi on 29 Dec 2018 during which Kalish-Rotem took to the stage. I remember a shocking statement she made there — that if anyone does not like how she plans on running the city, there is a 940 bus to Jerusalem. According to an article reporting on that interview, however, my memory was apparently not completely accurate. Perhaps the shock made me generalize and exaggerate what she said. In the article she was quoted as having said that if anyone wanted to contend with the Israel-Palestine conflict, they were invited to take the 940 bus to Jerusalem. More about this soon.
However, what I do clearly recall is hearing people talking all around me as we climbed the stairs up to street level to exit the community center. On all sides I heard my own thoughts reverberating in the male and female voices around me: “What did we do to ourselves?” Only, I did not vote for her, so I do not accept blame for her election and for us losing Yona Yahav in the last term he was seeking in order to complete development plans he had set in motion.
Now, three years into her five-year term, we have wild boar roaming the city streets freely, sometimes attacking.
#Hadash councilman Raja Za’atra will not serve as deputy mayor of #Haifa, but refused to back down from comments in which he compared the #IslamicState to the #Zionist movement and claimed #Hamas was not a terrorist organization.
— The Press Service of Israel, TPS IL (@TPS_News_co_il) December 12, 2018
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And in the first interview after her win, she clearly claimed to be bringing something new:
. . . totally different priorities, much more the residents in focus and a lot less public relations, long-term thinking and not short-term thinking. . . . simply a totally different world.
Last modified: December 11, 2025