By a single vote, the Central Election Committee has decided that Michael Ben-Ari of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party can run in the April 9 Knesset election.
Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit submitted an opinion that Ben-Ari should be disqualified from running for the Knesset because of blatantly racist remarks he has repeatedly made, but his opinion was not binding. In the end, the committee voted on Wednesday 16-15 against disqualifying Ben-Ari, with committee head Justice Hanan Melcer abstaining.
The leaders of Otzma Yehudit are successors of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the forced removal of Palestinians and a Jewish theocracy.
Kahane's Kach party was barred from competing in elections to the Knesset in 1988 and 1992 and outlawed altogether as a terrorist organization in 1994. The U.S. has likewise classified Kahane's Jewish Defense League as a terrorist group. In 2012, the U.S. refused to give Ben-Ari an entry visa, saying he was involved in a terror organization.
Prior to the vote, Otzma Yehudit candidate Baruch Marzel dismissed accusations of racism, saying, "We don't have anything against Arabs."
"We have a battle with our enemy, and it's some of the Arabs. There are some Jews," he told The Associated Press.
The committee also approved the candidacy of Otzma Yehudit co-leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as the party's controversial merger with the mainstream religious Zionist parties Habayit Hayehudi and National Union. The three will be running on a single ticket.
At the beginning of the Central Election Committee meeting, Ben-Gvir presented MK Stav Shaffir (Labor) with a slander lawsuit in the amount of 1 million shekels for calling members of his party "Nazis." Ben-Gvir's action created a disturbance.
MK Esawi Frej (Meretz) called out, "Racist, get out of here!"
Ben-Gvir responded, "He thinks he's on the Marmara [Gaza flotilla vessel]."
Melcer was forced to suspend the meeting for half an hour until order could be restored.
Speaking before the committee, Ben-Ari said, "I'm the dangerous man the attorney general thinks cannot run for the Knesset – me, whose eldest son finished the Givati training on his feet, whose other son is joining the Armored Corps three weeks from now."
Ben-Ari went on to say, "I have nine children. One of them is named Binyamin. He is named after the son of my teacher and mentor, Rabbi [Meir] Kahane, who was killed by an al-Qaida member. Gentlemen, I am not a racist."
Ben-Gvir said, "The day that representatives of the attorney general try and prevent my friend Dr. Ben-Ari from running for the Knesset is a dark day for democracy."
In another development, the committee voted 15-10 to disqualify Dr. Ofer Cassif, a candidate on the Ta'al-Hadash list, from running for the Knesset, as per a request filed by Otzma Yehudit and Yisrael Beytenu.
Cassif has used the terms "neo-Nazi" and "son of Adolf" to refer to cabinet ministers and called Jews who visit the Temple Mount "cancer."
Cassif said that his disqualification, which went against the opinion of Mendelblit, "proves that the members of the committee are guided by discriminatory, exclusionary politics."
Following the meeting, the Labor Party reported that Shaffir planned to petition the High Court of Justice "to prevent the racist, Kahanist inciters Ben-Gvir and Ben-Ari from running the Knesset election."
Shaffir has been the target of death threats over her opposition to Otzma Yehudit's Knesset run.
"The violence by the Kahane people is dangerous to Israeli society as a whole, and that's the important issue here – more than the personal danger experienced by anyone who dares stand up to them, and which many more people will experience. The Kahane followers blacken and destroy the Zionist vision, and harm the Jewish people with their hatred and racism and their ideas, which are reminiscent of dark times," Shaffir said.
Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon left the committee meeting before the vote, but Kulanu issued a statement that "Israeli democracy is strong enough to bear even [Michael] Ben-Ari."
Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg spoke out harshly against the decision to allow Ben-Ari to run.
"The embarrassing political decision by the Central Election Committee, which decided to ignore the position of the attorney general and rescue the Kahanists, is a mark of Cain on the Knesset. We will petition the High Court," Zandberg said.
MK Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al) said that "Kulanu once again missed an opportunity to make a principled statement by evading the vote to disqualify Ben-Ari the Kahanist."
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid added that "Kahlon's Kulanu party decided to absent itself from the vote to allow this violent bunch of racists to run for the Knesset. That isn't a 'sane Right,' – it isn't Right at all."
