Reform movement asks to disqualify far Right candidates

The Central Elections Committee should prevent the Otzma Yehudit party and candidates Itamar Ben-Gvir, Baruch Marzel and Bentzi Gopstein from running in the September 17 election, the Reform Movement petitioned the committee on Thursday.

The deadline for submissions of disqualification requests to the commit is Thursday night at 10pm Israel time. While in past elections, there have been requests to disqualify Arab lists and candidates, so far attention has been focused solely on the Far Right.

The Reform Movement succeeded in getting Otzma candidate Michael Ben-Ari disqualified ahead of the April election but did not succeed in banning Otzma as a whole or Ben-Gvir. The head of the movement in Israel, Democratic Union Knesset candidate Rabbi Gilad Kariv, said he expects more success this time.

“We have a good chance with both Marzel and Gopstein and we have new evidence on Ben-Gvir that we didn’t have before,” Kariv said. “Last time, the committee and the Supreme Court said Ben-Gvir was close to the red line but told us our evidence was too old.

“So this time we concentrated our appeal on his recent statements that prove he is loyal to the path of [the late extremist Rabbi Meir] Kahane and continues his incitement to racism all the time.”

Asked whether his petition would be seen differently this time, because he is a realistic candidate for Knesset, Kariv said his movement encourages people to be involved politically across the political map and has always opposed racism.

Marzel told The Jerusalem Post that he saw the petition against him as a compliment.

“The Left sees how much support we have, so they realize that if they don’t disqualify us, we will get in to the Knesset,” Marzel said. “If they thought we didn’t have a chance, they wouldn’t bother presenting the request.”

Marzel condemned the request’s timing, so soon after the murder of 19-year-old Dvir Sorek.

“The fact that on the day of a cruel murder of a Jew, the Reform Movement wants to disqualify Jews for fighting for the people of Israel in their land shows that they are disconnected from the people of Israel,” he said.

The Democratic Union and Blue and White also intend to request Otzma’s disqualification by Thursday night’s deadline. Otzma intends to request the disqualification of Blue and White’s number two candidate, Yair Lapid.