Likud’s Moshe Feiglin blasts Bayit Yehudi

Candidate says his party will be better for national-religious sector, accuses voters of allowing themselves to be deceived.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Moshe Feiglin 520 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Moshe Feiglin 520
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Likud Knesset candidate Moshe Feiglin unleashed his fiercest-ever attack on the Bayit Yehudi party over the weekend, accusing its voters of “putting their heads in the sand” and allowing themselves to be deceived.
In an article in the Makor Rishon newspaper that Feiglin posted on his website, the Likud candidate wrote that it has been proven over the past four years that when it comes to the two key issues of who will give more to the religious- Zionist sector and who will better protect the Land of Israel, the advantage of a significant faith-based power base within the ruling party is clear and unequivocal.
Feiglin wrote that they say in America “you can’t fool all the people all the time,” but Israelis say that “old pushovers don’t die, they are just replaced with new pushovers.”
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Noting the results of last month’s Likud primary, he said the national ruling party had opened its gates to the faith-based public as never before. Feiglin took credit for the party’s Knesset candidates list including seven settlers and many religious-Zionists in realistic slots.
“Why does the education minister send all Israeli students to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron?” Feiglin asked rhetorically. “Because of the members of Bayit Yehudi? Why does Transportation Minister Israel Katz pave every road he can in Judea and Samaria? Because of Bayit Yehudi MK Uri Orbach?” Feiglin urged the religious- Zionist public to remember that Bayit Yehudi’s forerunner, the National Religious Party (NRP) failed to stop the destruction of Jewish communities in Sinai in 1982 and in Gush Katif in 2005.
“Whoever has forgotten the entire sad history of sectarian politics is invited to once again enjoy himself in the sectarian back yard,” Feiglin wrote. “Look yourself in the mirror and answer honestly.
And then go to vote. But no putting your head in the sand.
No buying the line that a new, improved NRP middleman with a secular fig leaf has suddenly morphed into the Likud and will lead the country.”
Orbach responded that Feiglin was deluding himself if he believed that by being in the Likud he would have a real impact on the policies of the prime minister.
“I am happy the Likud found something to do with its religious-Zionist candidates,” Orbach said mockingly.
“The Likud is using them against the up and coming force in religious Zionism, which is Bayit Yehudi.
Instead of being the Jewish leaders they claimed to be, Feiglin and his allies have become servants of their secular masters.”