Smotrich welcomes Zvika Mor as party candidate: ‘Stands firm in his opinions’

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomes Zvika Mor as the latest candidate on his far-right Religious Zionism party’s electoral list during a joint press conference in the Knesset, praising the father of former hostage Eitan Mor as someone for whom “the national interest, the good of the people, and the state always prevail over personal interests.”

“Zvika additionally demonstrated an ability to stand firm in his opinions and correct values against immense forces acting against him, facing a campaign of poison and hatred that was also directed at us in Religious Zionism,” Smotrich says, referring to Mor’s outspoken opposition, as head of the Tikva Forum, to partial hostage release agreements with Hamas that involved the release of Palestinian security prisoners and temporary ceasefires in Gaza.

Mor is “a true educator and warrior who puts the people of Israel before himself, who acts out of a true and deep sense of mission and is not afraid to pay a personal price for his public and his principles,” Smotrich continues, comparing him to the Biblical patriarch Abraham who was tested by God by being commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac.

“Our father Abraham stood in that trial for three or four days. Zvika stood in it for two years, day after day, hour after hour,” Smotrich states. “At the moment of truth, he knew that the State of Israel comes before everything, that the people of Israel come before everything.”

Addressing reporters, Mor says that after his son Eitan was kidnapped on October 7, “the struggle to return the hostages through defeating the enemy became an inseparable part of my life. It was a struggle of pain, of sleepless nights, of prayers, of hope, and of one truth that I could not escape: the state of Israel cannot continue with the concepts that brought us to the disaster.”

“We are a nation at war. I understood that the return of the hostages must be the result of a decisive victory in the war. And indeed, only the pressures on Hamas brought back all the hostages. I believe that terror is neither appeased nor contained, but defeated,” Mor says.

“My son Eitan returned home, thank God, healthy and whole. But my responsibility did not end. Therefore, today I am joining the Religious Zionism party led by Bezalel Smotrich. I do this out of a deep sense of mission, alongside the understanding that the struggle for the Jewish identity of the state, for security, for settlement, and for the economy is not a struggle that ends with declarations to the media. It must continue in the place where decisions are made.”