Likud minister asks party director to reject far-right rapper
Tzachi Hanegbi moves to prevent Yoav Eliasi from joining Likud, says his views ‘don’t match up’ with party
Minister Tzachi Hanegbi on Sunday reportedly asked Likud party director Gadi Arieli to disqualify the membership of ultra-nationalist rapper Yoav Eliasi.
Eliasi’s announcement late last week that he would join the party invited scorn by more moderate elements within the right-wing Likud.
The outspoken Eliasi — known as The Shadow — has rejected the criticism, calling those against him leftists and vowing to return the party to “the true right.”
Earlier Sunday, Eliasi said Hanegbi’s graft conviction and past tenure in the Kadima party disqualified him from passing judgement and maintained the minister was afraid of him.
“This is a fascist attempt to remove me,” Eliasi told Channel 2.
Hanegbi, who is a senior Likud member and minister-without-portfolio in the Prime Minister’s Office, has said he will not allow Eliasi to join Likud “since his views do not match up with the party’s.”
The 38-year-old Eliasi, who has over 220,000 Facebook fans, has gained notoriety for his hard-line, inflammatory posts — and the even more inflammatory comments on his posts — that often single out Arabs and left-wing figures.
Eliasi has in the past called for paramedics to harvest the organs of Palestinians killed during attacks on Israelis so that they can be used to save Jews. He has also proposed that dead attackers be castrated to frustrate their belief in a reward of 72 virgins in heaven.
In his most recent controversial statement, on Thursday, he said Likud MK Benny Begin’s daughter had converted to Islam and her brother throws rocks at IDF soldiers.
Begin said the Likud should bar him from the party.
Following the completion of Eliasi’s paperwork last week, Likud MK Oren Hazan exclaimed that due to the rapper’s social media following, his membership would bring the party an electoral boost equivalent to five extra seats.
פנים חדשות במפלגת השלטון: הצל התפקד לליכודhttps://t.co/Cg9RvH76ip@attaliami pic.twitter.com/mS3qfY4SSa
— ידיעות אחרונות (@YediotAhronot) August 3, 2016
Hazan said the two “have a lot in common” and are both “fed up with the political correctness that has taken over” the Knesset.
The Times of Israel Community.