The Supreme Court of Israel has disallowed the candidacy of Baruch Marzel and Ben-Zion Gophtein for running in the elections for the 22nd Knesset. The pair, both members of the Otzma Yehudit party will now be removed from their party’s list.
The decision was unanimously accepted in the case of Gopshtein and the majority accepted the same decision for Baruch Marzel, both of whom will now be excluded from running for the Knesset due to their incitement to racism.
The court unanimously rejected the same claim made against party leader Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir and the party itself. Likewise it struck down the appeal to disallow the United Arab Party to run form Knesset under the same understanding.
Esther Hayut wrote the main reason behind the ruling. “The reasoning behind the unanimous decision to disallow Gopshtein was due to the dozens of instances which paint a clear picture that, due to his many statements made and his actions, such as leading the organization Lahava, brings us to the conclusion that Gopshtein systematically incites towards racism against the Arab population.”
Attorney and party leader ben Gvir responded to the ruling on Sunday evening and said: “The left-wing knows that without Otzma Yehudit and the seats we bring there cannot be a right-wing government. Therefore they are fighting hard to stop us. It won’t help them because the Israeli public knows that this fight is about values. The ruling of the supreme court will bring us the missing mandate we need to pass the threshold. Our first demand will be to change the makeup fo the judges who sit on the Supreme Court.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
I don’t particularly care for Baruch Marzel and Ben-Zion Gophtein, but to dismiss them as racists is stupid. What about Liberman who openly hates religious people? What about Meretz who openly hates religious people?
Really! the supreme court in Israel has too many American inspired liberal lefties. We need Jewish judges on the supreme court!
Why are the chareidi parties not using the same tactics to disqualify all those who systematically attack the Chareidim? Even though we know that these leftist judges would never even rebuke those reshoim for their anti-chareidism, but at least their double-facedness would become even clearer.
so ahmed tibi who supports Hamas is good but real Zionists are bad?
If opposition to intermarriage is now “racism”, then “racism” is a mitzvah.