Bennett: A vote for Otzma and Zehut is a vote for the Left

“Don’t give your votes to small fringe parties even if you like them, it’s like voting for [Blue and White leaders] Gantz and [Yair] Lapid.”

By JEREMY SHARON
Naftali Bennett at a ceremony at the education ministry (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Naftali Bennett at a ceremony at the education ministry
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Naftali Bennett said on Thursday that anyone voting for the far-right party Otzma Yehudit or Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut Party was essentially casting a vote for the Left, since those parties would not pass the electoral threshold and the votes would be wasted.
Speaking in English during a Facebook live stream session, Bennett continued his Yamina Party’s concerted effort to hang on to its political base of right-wing voters and prevent them slipping away, not only to the minor parties, but to the Likud as well.
“Voting for Otzma and Zehut is a vote for the Left, because it will allow Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Labor-Gesher [leader Amir] Peretz to get in [to the government],” said Bennett.
“Don’t give your votes to small fringe parties even if you like them, it’s like voting for [Blue and White leaders] Gantz and [Yair] Lapid.”
In the April election, almost 260,000 right-wing votes went to parties who did not cross the electoral threshold, including Zehut and Bennett’s New Right Party.
Bennett on numerous occasions during his half hour Facebook session repeatedly accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having adopted “left-wing” policies while masquerading as right-wing.
The senior Yamina leader gave as an example the release of more than 70 Palestinian and Israeli-Arab security prisoners that Netanyahu and the 30-second government agreed to, saying that Bayit Yehudi, which Bennett led at the time, stopped such releases.
Bayit Yehudi had in fact been a member of that government, and acted against only the final round of prisoner releases, but did not prevent the earlier ones.
Bennett also argued that it was Bayit Yehudi and Ayelet Shaked as justice minister – and not the Likud – who had successfully brought reforms to the High Court of Justice to reduce the judicial intervention he and his party so ardently oppose.
“The judicial system got too involved in running Israel, and only since Shaked came in do judges now understand that they are meant to judge, not rule,” asserted Bennett.


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