Far-right Otzma Yehudit Party to run in next election
Otzma Yehudit, which means “Jewish strength,” is seen as an ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach Party of assassinated MK Rabbi Meir Kahane.
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: NOVEMBER 6, 2018 02:04Baruch Marzel (photo credit: Tovah Lazaroff)
The most right-wing party on the Israeli political map will try to make a political comeback in the 2019 election for Knesset, the leaders of the Otzma Yehudi Party announced on Monday.Otzma Yehudit, which means “Jewish strength,” is seen as an ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach Party of assassinated MK Rabbi Meir Kahane.One of the party’s leaders is Baruch Marzel, who was a Kach spokesman for a decade and then led its secretariat. Its leaders also include former MK Michael Ben-Ari, attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir and the head of the anti-assimilation organization Benzi Gopstein.Ben-Ari criticized Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett. Otzma Yehudit will try to take votes away from Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi parties.“We are running for the Knesset in order to safeguard our children,” Ben-Ari said. “The Galilee has been abandoned to growing nationalist crime, the South has been captured by an enemy focused on its target, the Sudanese have captured the streets of Tel Aviv, and we are losing in the Gaza periphery due to a gang of politicians who know how to speak but not to get anything done.”In the 2015 election, Otzma Yehudit ran together with former Shas chairman Eli Yishai’s Yahad Party and fell 11,000 votes short of crossing the electoral threshold, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favors lowering.Otzma Yehudit had begun a fund-raising campaign via crowd-funding.
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