Peretz: No right-wing union with Kahane acolyte
Far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party vows to keep Baruch Marzel on its list of candidates for Knesset, says it will pass threshold for parliament in September elections
The leader of the Jewish Home Party, Education Minister Rafi Peretz, says he will not reform the Union of Right-Wing Parties with the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), if the latter's list of Knesset candidates includes Baruch Marzel, the former acolyte of late racist Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Otzma Yehudit has rejected Jewish Home's demand and insists it will be part of the next Knesset after the September elections.
The third party in the rightist union, Bezalel Smotrich's Tkuma party, appears however to be heading into a merger with Jewish Home, which will increase the chances of both parties of passing the threshold needed to enter the Knesset.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promoted the union of parties to the right of Likud, including Otzma Yehudit, hoping to guarantee his win in the April 9 elections. The move caused outrage and concern that ultra-nationalists would eventually be part of a Likud-led coalition government.
American-born Kahane formed the Jewish Defense League in New York in 1968. He left the U.S. for Israel in 1971 and in the same year created the Kach party, from which he launched his election campaign for the Knesset.
Kahane and the Kach platform called for expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank. He served one term in the Knesset before his party was banned from competing in the elections for being racist and was eventually outlawed altogether. He died in 1990 at the hands of an assassin in New York.
Baruch Marzel, a resident of the Jewish settlement in Hebron and a former Kach activist, is a member of Otzma Yehudit, which is headed by fellow Kach supporter Itamar Ben-Gvir. The party is also the political home of the "Ahim" (Brothers) movement, which fights intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.
