An advertisement calling the Bayit Yehudi a ghetto and featuring party chairman
Naftali Bennett behind barbed wire was removed from an unofficial Likud members’
website, after the parties complained to the police and the Central Election
Committee on Tuesday.
The advertisement, which changed the colors of the
Bayit Yehudi logo so it features a yellow star and called the party the “Jewish
Ghetto,” links to an image on Facebook that reads: “It took 60 years for the
knitted kippot [national-religious population] to break out of the sectorial
ghetto in which the National Religious Party imprisoned them. Sixty years until
we finally became part of the general Israeli public and were saved from the
lonely ghetto in which past leaders locked us.”
“Now,” the text
continues, “Naftali Bennett wants to bring us back to the old NRP. Sorry
Naftali, we prefer to be part of the Israeli public and not
separate. Knitted kippot will have an influence from the
inside.”
The ad was funded by Moshe Ifargan, who ran for the Jerusalem
district slot in the Likud primary and was placed 96th on the party’s Knesset
list, and was posted on “Likudnik,” an unofficial site run by party activist
Arik Ziv, and links to a Facebook page called “Likud Supporters – Campaign on
the Ground,” which expresses frustration with the party’s official campaign and
calls to “save it before we lose the election.”
On Tuesday afternoon,
Ifargan admitted that he paid for the advertisements, and said he has no
connection to the official party campaign, but hoped to stop the Likud Beytenu
joint list from losing more seats in the polls.
Ifargan agreed to pull
the ads after the Likud denounced them and issued a complaint to the Central
Election Committee.
“We condemn and express contempt for this sickening
advertisement,” the party’s campaign stated earlier Tuesday.
“The Likud
has no connection to Likudnik, and everything that appears there is the
website’s responsibility,” the party explained.
In addition, MK Ofir
Akunis, the Likud’s representative on the Central Election Committee, filed a
complaint and demanded that the advertisements clarify that they are not
connected to the Likud. Akunis will also work to remove Ifargan from the party
and from the list of Knesset candidates.
Bayit Yehudi complained to
police that the ad incites to violence and is offensive to Holocaust
survivors.
“My brothers in the Likud, what happened to you?” Bennett, a
former adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, asked on his Facebook
profile.
In 2011, MK Uri Ariel (National Union), second on the Bayit
Yehudi list, proposed a bill that would criminalize inappropriate usage of
Holocaust imagery. An ad that uses the yellow star, like the “Jewish Ghetto”
advertisement, would carry a fine of NIS 100,000 and a six-month prison
sentence.
The bill was approved by the Ministerial Committee on
Legislation and passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset before it was
dissolved ahead of the upcoming election.