Debate over disqualifying extremist candidates devolves into shouting match

A debate over calls to disqualify extremist right-wing political candidates from running in the September 17 election devolves into a shouting match in the Central Elections Committee, with the committee’s chairman ordering that one left-wing lawmaker’s microphone be cut off after she refused to yield the floor.

The Democratic Camp, Blue and White, Labor-Gesher, MK Issawi Frej, and the Reform movement all petitioned the committee to disqualify all or part of the racist Otzma Yehudit party, which is composed of followers of the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane.

During the debate, Democratic Camp lawmaker Stav Shaffir calls the far-right party “anti-Zionist,” causing Otzma Yehudit’s Baruch Marzel to shout, “She won’t call me anti-Zionist!”

She retorts, “Sue me,” a reference to Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir’s penchant for threatening to sue critics, including a recent slander lawsuit he filed against Shaffir.

Itamar Ben Gvir, right, Baruch Marzel, center, and Bentzi Gopstein, right, of the Otzma Yehudit party at the Central Elections Committee meeting debating petitions to disqualify them from standing in the September 2019 election, at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on August 14, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Shaffir warns that Otzma Yehudit’s “terrible racism” would destroy Israel’s “delicate social fabric,” and accuses the party of “frightening and threatening as it crawls its way into the Knesset.”

Committee chairman and Supreme Court justice Hanan Melcer orders Shaffir’s microphone cut off after she ignored several attempts to get her to finish her comments.