Jerusalem - Israel's main opposition Labour Party last night dealt itself a devastating blow in the run-up to May's general elections, when it dumped its only Ethiopian-born member of the Knesset amid charges of racism and vote-rigging, David Horovitz reports from Jerusalem
Mr Addisu Massala was kicked off Labour's list of candidates for the next Knesset - defeated in a vote among more than 100,000 Labour party members by another immigrant, from the former Soviet Union, Mr Sopha Landver. But Mr Massala insisted that the vote was rigged, and that party leader, Mr Ehud Barak, had engineered his ousting for racist reasons.
Mr Massala's deafening cries of outrage disrupted a carefully planned victory parade of Labour's candidates last night - a celebratory gathering which had been timed to coincide with the main evening news, and had been designed to energise the party's election campaign against the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.