Jewish Home, National Union renew electoral pact, call other rightists to join

Rift develops over name of alliance after extreme-right Otzma Yehudit, complaining it was ‘used and discarded,’ is left out, for now, of Union of Right-Wing Parties

By ToI Staff 10 July 2019, 2:16 am

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Jewish Home party leader Rafi Peretz (L) and National Union head Bezalel Smotrich sign an agreement to renew the Union of Right-Wing Parties electoral alliance on July 9, 2019. (Courtesy)

The leaders of the national-religious Jewish Home and National Union parties on Tuesday renewed their agreement to run together in the upcoming general elections.

Education Minister Rafi Peretz, who heads Jewish Home, and Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the National Union leader, called on Itamar Ben Gvir of the extremist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party to meet with them as soon as possible to agree on a joint Knesset run.

But Ben Gvir said that this time his party had been excluded and warned the alliance not to use the Union of Right-Wing Parties name from the last run.

“The Union of Right-Wing Parties is a name that was derived from a union of the parties of the right, but at the moment there is a split,” Ben-Gvir told Channel 12.

Otzma Yehudit party member Itamar Ben Gvir speaks at a campaign event in Bat Yam, April 6, 2019. (Flash90)

“They are not currently together with Otzma Yehudit, To my sorrow they used (us) and discarded (us),” he said.

Otzma Yehudit was included in the URWP for April’s elections as part of an agreement engineered by Prime Minister Netanyahu, but Peretz is reportedly wary of teaming up with some of the party’s members.

The agreement last time to run together with Otzma Yehudit caused an outcry due to its racist ideology.

Ahead of the election the High Court of Justice barred the leader of the party Michael Ben Ari from running for parliament over his anti-Arab ideology and incitement.

Otzma Yehudit leaders have described themselves as proud disciples of the late rabbi Meir Kahane, who supported violently expelling Arabs from Israel and the West Bank and once proposed legislation outlawing inter-ethnic sexual relations. Kahane’s Kach party was declared illegal by Israeli authorities.

Otzma Yehudit now says it supports encouraging emigration of non-Jews from Israel, and expelling Palestinians and Arab Israelis who refuse to declare loyalty to Israel and accept diminished status in an expanded Jewish state, whose sovereignty extends throughout the West Bank.

Ben Gvir is among several Otzma Yehudit leaders who has a photograph of mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein hanging on a wall in his home. Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshipers and wounded another 125 in a shooting rampage at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site in 1994.

The party’s union with Jewish Home was orchestrated by Netanyahu last month in an effort to prevent losing right-wing votes if the individual parties failed to cross the Knesset threshold of 3.25%. He promised the union two ministerial posts in his next government, and gave a Jewish Home member the 28th slot on the Likud Knesset slate.

Union of Right Wing Parties candidates (from L-R) Rafi Peretz, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotich pose for a photo on April 9, 2019. (Courtesy)

However, the specter of Otzma Yehudit gaining one or more seats in the Knesset has drawn criticism from Israeli lawmakers and major Jewish groups around the world.

In a joint statement Tuesday, Smotrich and Peretz said unity among national-religious parties is needed to “in order to maximize our electoral potential and prevent the wasting of votes.”

The two also called on Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked to enter talks on forming a joint list.

Bennett and Shaked bolted Jewish Home before the last elections to form the New Right party, which failed to clear the minimum vote threshold needed to enter the Knesset. Bennett will again run with the New Right in September’s elections, while speculation has swirled over which party Shaked will end up running with.