Netanyahu Reaches for the Extreme

Otzma Yehudit

by Paul R. Pillar

The direct, and still extreme, descendant of a U.S.-listed foreign terrorist organization is in position to become part of the next ruling coalition of Israel, and it has been put in that position at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The organization is Otzma Yehudit, which translates as Jewish Power or Jewish Strength. It is the current political vehicle for unreconstructed followers of the late Meir Kahane, the radical Brooklyn-born rabbi and ultra-nationalist.

Netanyahu, facing a challenge for the prime minister’s job in coming elections from former army chief Benny Gantz, has urged two other far-right parties to form a joint list with Otzma Yehudit for elections in April, lest none of the three parties reaches the 3.25 percent of the vote required to win seats in the Knesset. In his appeal this week to the party leaders, Netanyahu said, “If you don’t unite, you won’t pass the electoral threshold, the right-wing bloc will lose and Gantz will form a left-wing government with the support of the Arab parties.” The following day, Otzma Yehudit reached agreement with one of the other two parties, Jewish Home, on a joint list of candidates.

Meir Kahane repeatedly demonstrated his penchant for violent extremism when he still resided in the United States. In 1971, he received a five-year suspended sentence for a bomb-making plot. He later was sentenced to a year in prison for violating the terms of his probation by smuggling arms from Israel and trying to instigate a bombing of the Iraqi embassy.

After relocating to Israel, Kahane founded Kach, a party that competed unsuccessfully in several elections before finally winning a single Knesset seat in 1984. Kahane and his followers meanwhile continued their violent activities, and Kahane was arrested multiple times. After an Egyptian-born gunman assassinated Kahane in New York in 1990, Kach split, with the offshoot group calling itself Kahane Chai (Kahane Lives). Both parties have been outlawed in Israel since the mid-1990s on the grounds that they are racist, and Kahane Chai is the group that still can be found on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

The Kahane-associated parties were extreme even for Israeli politics 25 years ago, but the continued rightward drift of those politics has permitted a rebirth of the Kahanists. Otzma Yehudit exemplifies the sort of reincarnation of outlawed parties under a different name that has occurred elsewhere, such as with Islamist parties in Turkey.

Otzma Yehudit embodies Kahane’s ideas and professes a fondness for his methods. The party calls for the annexation of the West Bank, undiluted Israeli rule over all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, and the expulsion of “enemies of Israel” to Arab countries. When the party’s current leader, Michael Ben-Ari, was invited to disavow Kahane’s racist ideology, he scoffed at the idea of doing so and said that Kahane was his rabbi and his teacher. Ben-Ari has argued for the removal of most Arabs from Israel. During the Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip in 2012, he said, “There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives—mow them down!” Another party leader and former aide to Kahane, Baruch Marzel, has organized parties to celebrate Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 killed 29 Palestinians praying at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro has warned that any Kahanists who get elected to the Knesset might not be able to visit the United States because their precursor organization is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Anyone who boosts the political fortunes of the Kahanists might also violate the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Netanyahu’s effort to boost right-wing parties over the electoral threshold and thereby help form a majority in the Knesset is, of course, all about the prime minister trying to hang on to power. But the effort also says something about the current political spectrum in Israel. What might have been isolated and dismissed as a fringe 25 years ago no longer is. There certainly are critical voices in Israel disparaging the idea of Netanyahu getting into bed with Otzma Yehudit, but the prime minister is a smart politician. He evidently has calculated that whatever he loses from such criticism is more than offset by the prospect of a few extra Knesset seats that could become part of a governing coalition that will be at least as far to the extreme right as his current coalition is.

Paul Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Dr. Pillar's degrees are from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Princeton University. His books include Negotiating Peace (1983), Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (2001), Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy (2011), and Why America Misunderstands the World (2016).

SHOW 5 COMMENTS

5 Comments

  1. This is simply the logical progression, isn’t it? Ultimately, once you get past the denials and blameshifting etc, the only way you can justify the genocide of millions of Palestinians (and yes, the word is apt, legally: the attempted destruction of a people *as a people* and no, it doesn’t matter that Palestinian population is increasing…becauise it is increasing inside refugee camps and behind barbed wire) is to eventually fall back on racism and ethno-religious superiority. This is what it all boils down to, after all.

  2. Fact: the same law firm that fought for the delisting of the Iranian MEK as a terrorist organization was pressing for the delisting of the Kahane Khai in a similar legal proceeding

  3. Peoples Mojahedin in 03-1387, for Natl Cncl Resistance in 03-1388, for Kahane Chai in 03-1392 DC Circuit Court

  4. The implication of this article is that the presence of Kahanists in the Knesset is unprecedented. This is untrue. Michael Ben-Ari, the head of Otzma Yehudit, was also in the Knesset from 2009-2013, and he was not a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition during that time, but rather sat in the opposition.

    The combination between Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit is being referred to as a technical bloc, which means it is likely they plan to part ways immediately after the election. If Netanyahu has the luxury of doing so, he will probably form a coalition with the former only and not with the latter.

  5. That’s great! Fascism is spreading and it’s good for them!

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