{"id":38823,"date":"2019-04-05T03:23:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T03:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38823"},"modified":"2019-04-05T03:23:38","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T03:23:38","slug":"with-netanyahus-help-racist-aide-could-become-mp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38823","title":{"rendered":"With Netanyahu\u2019s help, \u2018racist\u2019 aide could become MP"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nHEBRON:\u00a0The bespectacled man was given a hero\u2019s welcome when he arrived for the party on the recent Jewish holiday of Purim, with teenagers singing and applauding around him.<\/p>\n

\nItamar Ben-Gvir was on the streets of Hebron, a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank, among Israeli settlers reveling while disguised and masked according to Jewish tradition.<\/p>\n

\nThe support for him there was a sign of why he may soon become a member of Israel\u2019s Parliament as part of an extreme-right party many view as racist \u2014 helped along by a deal brokered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNo way \u2014 there\u2019s no way that they\u2019re racist,\u201d said Yehudit Katz, a resident of another West Bank settlement who came to celebrate for Purim in Hebron.<\/p>\n

\nSeveral hundred Israeli settlers live in Hebron under heavy military guard \u2014 including Ben-Gvir \u2014 amidst around 200,000 Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\u201cThe solution that they have is to keep the people that are not Jewish \u2014 the Arabs, whoever \u2014 that are loyal to the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland, and there are many Arabs like that,\u201d said Katz.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want terrorists. Terrorists can go live somewhere else,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Gvir, a 42-year-old lawyer, said \u201cGod willing\u201d Jewish Power will make it into Parliament.<\/p>\n

\nIt is a prospect that has touched off one of the most intense debates in the campaign ahead of April 9 elections.<\/p>\n

\nJewish Power\u2019s leaders are followers of an assassinated racist rabbi whose group was labeled a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Israel itself.<\/p>\n

\nNetanyahu\u2019s deal that saw Jewish Power join two other far-right parties to run on the same electoral list drew disgust at home and among Jewish communities abroad, particularly in the US.<\/p>\n

\nFor Netanyahu, the deal ahead of what is expected to be a close election was pure politics.<\/p>\n

\nHe defended it by saying he does not want any right-wing votes to go to waste as he eyes his next coalition.<\/p>\n

\nRunning alone, Jewish Power was unlikely to pass the 3.25 percent electoral threshold.<\/p>\n

\nBut all has not gone smoothly for Jewish Power, whose leader Michael Ben-Ari was also running but has been disqualified by the Supreme Court for statements it ruled were an incitement to racism.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Gvir\u2019s candidacy was also challenged at the court, but he was allowed to stand, making him the only Jewish Power representative with a chance to make it into Parliament. Jewish Power are followers of late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach movement wanted to chase Arabs from Israel.<\/p>\n

\nThe ideology of Kahane, assassinated in New York in 1990, also inspired Baruch Goldstein, who carried out a massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in Hebron in 1994.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Gvir acknowledges having a picture of Goldstein in his living room, but has reportedly said it is because he was a medical doctor who rescued Jews targeted in Palestinian attacks.<\/p>\n

\nFor Adalah, a rights group for Arab Israelis, Ben-Gvir belongs to a \u201cracist movement recognized as a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nJewish Power strongly disputes the characterization, with Ben-Gvir telling the Supreme Court it is only against \u201cenemies of Israel\u201d and not Arabs in general.<\/p>\n

\nOpinion polls show the list that Jewish Power is part of winning between five and seven seats in the 120-seat Parliament.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Gvir is seventh on the list.<\/p>\n

\nJewish Power advocates removing \u201cIsrael\u2019s enemies from our land,\u201d a reference to Palestinians and Arab Israelis who carry out attacks or who they see as not accepting the Jewish state they envision.<\/p>\n

\nIt also calls for Israel annexing the West Bank, where more than 2.5 million Palestinians live.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Ari was previously a member of Parliament as part of a different right-wing list between 2009 and 2013, but Jewish Power has never passed the electoral threshold.<\/p>\n

\nBen-Gvir has long been an outspoken member of the far-right.<\/p>\n

\nIndicted 53 times since his youth, he boasts of having been cleared in 46 cases. He decided to study law on the recommendation of judges so he could defend himself.<\/p>\n

\nHe defends settlers accused of violence, including those allegedly responsible for an arson attack that killed an 18-month-old boy and his parents in 2015 in the West Bank, an incident that drew widespread revulsion.<\/p>\n

\nIn 1995, when only 19 and in a time of turmoil following the Oslo accords with the Palestinians, he appeared on television with what he said was the stolen emblem from then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin\u2019s Cadillac.<\/p>\n

\nRabin was assassinated by an Israeli opposed to the Oslo accords later that year.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe got to this symbol. We\u2019ll get to him,\u201d Ben-Gvir said at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HEBRON:\u00a0The bespectacled man was given a hero\u2019s welcome when he arrived for the party on the recent Jewish holiday of Purim, with teenagers singing and applauding around him. Itamar Ben-Gvir was on the streets of Hebron, a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank, among Israeli settlers reveling while disguised and masked according to Jewish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}