Moshe Feiglin, far-right firebrand, says Netanyahu should have quit after Oct. 7

Moshe Feiglin, whose far-right Zehut faction is considered part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of supporters, said on Monday that Netanyahu should have resigned after the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Feiglin told the 103FM radio station that Netanyahu was responsible for the security debacle surrounding the invasion and massacre. He said the premier was “not alone, of course,” in being at fault, but noted that he was “head of the system” for most of the past three decades. Since 1996, when he won his first election, Netanyahu has served as prime minister for a total of 19 years.

Feiglin also accused Netanyahu in the interview of having already decided on October 7 “not to win” the ensuing war in Gaza. Feiglin has expressed extreme views on the territory, calling for Israel to push the Palestinians out of the war-torn enclave and declaring at one point that “every baby in Gaza is an enemy.”

Netanyahu has never accepted direct responsibility for the October 7 catastrophe, and has sought to blame Israel’s security chiefs for the failures surrounding it. He has also resisted calls to form a statutory state commission of inquiry into the debacle

In last month’s election, Feiglin’s party ran on a joint slate with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, a key Netanyahu ally. The slate signed a surplus vote-sharing agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud ahead of the election, and Religious Zionism as well as Zehut recommended that Netanyahu serve another term as prime minister. Feiglin was No. 2 on the joint slate and thus will be sworn in as an MK when the new Knesset gathers for the first time on Tuesday.

Feiglin, whose grandson Yair Levin was killed fighting in Gaza in June 2024, served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015 as a member of Likud and clashed with Netanyahu repeatedly while a member of the party. He launched repeated failed attempts to unseat Netanyahu as Likud leader.

The veteran far-right activist later bolted Likud to found Zehut (“Identity”), which blends his libertarian economic views with his calls for the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The faction has run independently in multiple elections but never made it into the Knesset until this year, when it teamed up with Religious Zionism in order to shore up both parties’ flailing poll numbers.

The slate, which holds a total of six seats, may not be part of the next government. On Sunday, President Isaac Herzog on Sunday gave Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s lead challenger, the first go at forming a government, though his prospects are uncertain.

Netanyahu has called for a unity government including all the parties in his outgoing coalition, which his opponents reject. Members of Eisenkot’s bloc, which also lacks a majority, have discussed forming a government with the support of either Arab-led or ultra-Orthodox parties.

Speaking to 103FM, Feiglin said he was unsurprised “the left” was now making overtures to Haredi parties after it campaigned heavily on ending the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption. He referred to calls from some anti-government protesters in 2023, before October 7, for IDF reservists to refuse to report for duty in protest of the government’s judicial overhaul.

“The left’s flip-flop really doesn’t surprise me,” Feiglin said. “It isn’t complicated to see that these guys who in 2023 sought to tear the army apart at all costs aren’t exactly great patriots who all of a sudden are short on soldiers and want to draft every last one.”

“It isn’t patriotism that led to the agenda of ‘Haredim now,’ but the desire to stoke controversy and tear apart the government,” he said.

He criticized the election campaign discourse for being too focused on the Haredi draft issue instead of “the main issue, which is how we prevent the next massacre” after October 7.

Responding to Netanyahu’s call for a unity government, Feiglin said he may welcome it, but keep Zehut in the opposition.

“Unity is certainly something that this nation needs, but paralysis… that preserves the concepts that led to the last massacre, and therefore necessarily advances the next massacre, is a very grave thing,” he said. “It could very well be that I’ll be happy there is unity, but keep the Zehut party in the opposition to keep seeing the real direction that will prevent the massacre.”