Democrats party kicks off ‘most fateful’ election campaign, sets sights on Education and Justice ministries

The Democrats party kicks off its election campaign at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv with a pledge to keep criminal suspects out of office and demands to control the Education and Justice ministries in the next government.

Speakers also rail against settler violence and call for dismantling settler outposts in the West Bank.

The Democrats were lambasted by figures to their left yesterday, after party leader Yair Golan and other top members described the deadly gunfight that took place between locals and settlers who illegally entered a Nablus-area Palestinian village as Palestinian terrorism. Two Israelis and four Palestinians were killed in the clash, which then sparked dozens of settler raids on villages across the West Bank, as well as a major IDF crackdown.

About 1,000 people, many of them in blue Democrats shirts, fill the square in front of the Tel Aviv city hall. They chant “democracy” in the style of the past three years’ anti-government protests, and similarly chant “Democrats.”

Golan is introduced as “the leader whose feet are firm on the ground but whose eyes look out into the distance,” who formed The Democrats by merging Israel’s legacy left-leaning parties Labor and Meretz, as well as various protest groups, in a “historic union that will change the face of the country for generations to come.”

Golan says the party is “embarking on the most fateful battle ever for the future of the State of Israel.”

“From this night on we’re going out into the field and speaking with every single Israeli and bringing in one million votes,” he says, to applause. That figure would land the party about 30 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, though polls typically show the party receiving about 10 seats in the election, which is scheduled for October 27.

Referring to the West Bank shoot-out yesterday, Golan accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz of deliberately turning the West Bank “on the eve of the election into a violent arena that endangers human life.”

“Our soldiers’ blood that has been spilled, and that unfortunately is yet to be spilled, is on their hands,” Golan says, vowing to dismantle “[National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir’s armed militias and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich’s outposts” so that “our dear IDF will return to its supreme mission — protecting the State of Israel.”

“We’ll lead a political-security-regional initiative that will restore sanity,” he says.

MK Naama Lazimi, who nabbed the No. 2 spot on the Democrats electoral slate after winning the party’s primaries this week, says she seeks to replace “commissar Yoav Kisch” as education minister and clean up the “religious coercion, nationalism and racism” that Kisch’s arch-conservative allies have injected into school curricula.

“The education system will be proud to discuss equality, democracy, human and civil rights, mutual accountability, coexistence and peace,” says Lazimi, also vowing to imbue children with the values of “humanistic Judaism.”

“Especially after yesterday’s events, the education system we’ll establish will deplore fascism and messianic nationalism,” Lazimi says. “We won’t let our children serve as private security guards for the Hilltop hooligans in illegal outposts who perpetrate Jewish terror in the territories.”

At the end of the rally, supporters march on to the weekly anti-government protest on Habima Square.