Lapid blasts education minister, accuses him of backing 1994 Hebron massacre

Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid on Sunday attacked Education Minister Rafi Peretz, accusing the right-wing politician of supporting Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre.

The jibe was a reference to the deal struck by Peretz’s Jewish Home party last month with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party. Jewish Home merged with the party of Kahanist disciples before going back on the agreement and joining the Yamina alliance ahead of the March 2 elections.

“We do not want an education minister who thinks Baruch Goldstein was okay,” Lapid said. “An education minister who does not think it is okay to go to a prayer house and conduct a massacre. To murder 29 innocent people. It seems reasonable to require the education minister to be against cold-blooded murder.”

Peretz hit back, attacking Lapid of “wild incitement” against religious Jews, and denying that he supported the attack.

“Lapid, there is [no] limit to your lies and your wild incitement against religious Zionism, shame on you,” Peretz wrote in a statement. “I never said the slaughter at the Tomb of the Patriarchs was okay.”

Otzma Yehudit is made up of followers of late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane. It supports encouraging emigration of non-Jews from Israel, and expelling Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who refuse to declare loyalty to Israel and accept diminished status in an expanded Jewish state whose sovereignty extends throughout the West Bank.

Leader Itamar Ben Gvir infamously keeps a photograph of Baruch Goldstein hanging in his living room. He has defended the photo in the past, saying he hangs it out of respect for Goldstein, who saved many Jewish lives as a doctor, before he entered Hebron’s Tomb of Patriarchs and shot dead 29 worshipers and wounded 125 others in 1994.

Ben Gvir’s former running mate, ex-MK Michael Ben-Ari, was disqualified from running for the Knesset last year, over his support for racism.

The spat came amid what is regarded as Peretz’s worst period in politics since being elected Jewish Home chairman nearly a year ago.

In a January 10 interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the former chief IDF rabbi suggested that gay couples are not “natural.” The comment was lambasted by lawmakers across the political spectrum and led to public protests calling for the education minister’s ouster, with several cities even holding specially scheduled lessons on LGBT acceptance in a clear act of repudiation.

During slate negotiations, Bennett offered to fold Peretz’s Jewish Home into the Yamina alliance, but did not extend such an offer to Otzma Yehudit, whose slate of self-described disciples of Kahane was a step too far for the New Right chairman.

Peretz responded that he would not back out of his agreement with Otzma Yehudit — which the central committee agreed to approve in a meeting that turned violent as supporters of MK Moti Yogev, who opposed the chairman’s inking of the merger behind his back, clashed with backers of Peretz in an embarrassing scuffle widely shared on social media.

But in the final hours before the party filing deadline, the Jewish Home chairman buckled to pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as senior rabbinic figures in the national religious camp, who warned him that his slate would not cross the electoral threshold.

The embarrassing U-turn, which left Otzma Yehudit to run on its own, included Peretz deleting a tweet, reading “my word is my bond,” just three minutes after he posted it as part of an effort to assure the far-right party that he was not backing out of their deal.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.