Rabbi Zvi Yisrael Tau, the spiritual leader of the radical Noam party, decreed Sunday that it was acceptable to form a right-wing government with the endorsement of the Islamist Ra'am party.
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Tau said the opposite just a few weeks ago, but with time running out on the mandate vested in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a coalition, it seems Tau is trying to clear a path for Noam leader Avi Maoz to support the move.
Noam, which has never before been able to get elected into parliament joined forces with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party ahead of the March 23 elections. Together, they joined the Religious Zionist Party, in hopes the alliance would push all three factions over the four-seat electoral threshold. The move worked, as the latter secured six Knesset seats, giving Otzma Yehudit and Noam one seat each.
Both Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit chief Itamar Ben-Gvir, vehemently oppose any cooperation with Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas.
In a joint statement, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir said that their position on the matter "has not changed. We will not allow for the government to lean on terror sympathizers not will we allow Mansour Abbas to gain any [political] power."
In a letter released Sunday, Tau wrote that, "given the terrible shock caused by the disaster the stuck the festivities at Mount Meron, we need to purify our hearts and remove from us the terrible infliction of hatred and propaganda that threaten the resilience of our country, the stability of the government, and promoting the prosperity of the country.
"We must reject the hatred and slander against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," Tau stressed.
"His success in bolstering the country's resilience, in standing firm against Israel's enemies that wish to destroy us, in changing the regional equation by getting the nations of the world to confront Iran's dangerous scheme; in bringing medical and economic relief to Israel despite the coronavirus pandemic – all this, unfortunately, has made various elements trying to undermine Israel's resilience to distribute false propaganda, rife with ingratitude and personal hatred, and seeking nothing but to unseat an incumbent prime minister by spreading hatred and social discord in the public on the one hand while drafting hate-filled indictments against the prime minister on the other hand."
The left-wing government, he continued, harbors a host of threats: "The plot of far-left elements that push for a 'state of all its citizens,' is not just to oust Netanyahu and form a government the diplomatic-security policy of which would be hollow and may severely undermine our position against Iran, it could also undercut the integrity of our land while promoting the false idea of 'two states for two peoples'.
"Moreover, they [left-wing elements] pose a much graver threat when it comes to weakling the claim to a nation-state. The radical, 'progressive' Left is ready to implement its dangerous ideas such as repealing the Nation-State Law and declaring [Israel as] 'a state of all its citizens,' undermining the IDF, and promoting 'postmodern ideas in general, such as the distortion of personal and family concepts, the separation of religion from the state, harming the sacred status of Shabbat and abolishing the Chief Rabbinate thus creating a separation between the parts of the nation."
This, he warned, "Will all be anchored a series of destructive laws that will also see them [the Left] enshrine the status of the judicial system as one crucial in any decision on national values and questions."
While the radical Otzma Yehudit follows the Kahanist doctrine, Noam is an extremist religious-Zionist party that follows Tau's teachings and is known for its hardline anti-LGBTQ, anti-Reform positions.
Most recently Maoz announced that as part of the coalition talks, he plans to demand that the government repeal the law protecting women from violence and safeguarding their equal representation for women in politics and state institutions.
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