Less than half of Israelis oppose far-right MK serving in government — TV poll

Less than half of Israelis are firmly opposed to MK Itamar Ben Gvir serving as a government minister, according to a television poll, amid a rise in support for the far-right lawmaker.

Asked if they would want Ben Gvir to be a minister, 48 percent of the respondents to the Channel 13 news poll said no, as opposed to 27% who said yes. Another 17% said they don’t care, and the remaining 8% didn’t know.

Ben Gvir, who heads the extremist Otzma Yehudit party and is a disciple of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, last week reached a deal to run in the upcoming elections with fellow far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is seeking to return to power in the November 1 vote, helped broker the deal.

The TV survey forecast Netanyahu’s opposition right-wing religious bloc, which includes the joint Smotrich-Ben Gvir slate, would win 59 seats, two short needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Parties that back the outgoing government picked up 56 seats in the poll, while the opposition Joint List of majority Arab parties got five seats.

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s Zionist Spirit received 2 percent of votes in the poll, short of the threshold parties must clear to enter the Knesset.

Likud: 32
Yesh Atid: 24
National Unity: 13
Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit: 12
Shas: 8
United Torah Judaism: 7
Yisrael Beytenu: 6
Labor: 5
Joint List: 5
Meretz: 4
Ra’am: 4

The poll was made up of 704 respondents, with a 3.7% margin of error.