Court bans far-right candidate
Israel’s Supreme Court yesterday disqualified a far-right candidate from the April 9 national election and overturned a decision by the Central Election Committee to block a joint Arab slate and a candidate from a leftist alliance from the race.
Human rights groups and representatives of the Arab-led parties welcomed the court’s ruling rejecting last week’s vote by the election committee, a body made up representatives of each political faction in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
Michael Ben Ari, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit faction, called the decision to prevent his candidacy anti-democratic.
‘‘There is a legal junta here who wants to take over our lives,’’ Ben Ari said in a statement. ‘‘This is not democracy.’’
Ben Ari accused Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit of scuttling his political plans. The country’s top lawyer had written a legal opinion that Ben Ari not be allowed to run, citing an incitement of racism.
Parties and individuals can be disqualified from running for office for three reasons – rejecting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, inciting racism, or expressing support for an enemy state or for terrorist organisations.
Ben Ari and his party, which translates to ‘‘Jewish Power,’’ have argued for the forcible transfer of Israel’s minority Arabs unless they swear an oath of loyalty. The faction had been given a shot at entering the Knesset thanks to a deal it reached with two other far-right parties. The agreement was encouraged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli commentators and U.S. Jewish groups condemned the move, viewing Jewish Power as an offshoot of Kach, a group once led by an extremist rabbi, Meir Kahane. Israel outlawed Kach several decades ago, and the United States considers it a terrorist organisation. The U.S.-born Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990.
A coalition of right-wing parties, including Netanyahu’s Likud faction, had pushed to ban the joint Balad-United Arab List slate, as well as the leftist candidate Ofer Cassif. They had argued that the parties and Cassif – a politics professor and the only Jewish candidate for the Arabmajority Hadash party – had either expressed views supporting terrorism or rejected Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
But Adalah, a legal center advocating for Arab minority rights in Israel that represented the Arab parties before the court, said the election committee’s decision was purely political, ‘‘reflecting a McCarthyist persecution of those whose views are not acceptable to Israel’s political right.’’
Cassif said in the wake of the court decision that justice had been served.
‘‘There was no justification for the election committee’s ruling,’’ the candidate said in a statement, ‘‘it was a shameful political attempt by the Kahanists, under the auspices of Netanyahu, to reduce the democratic space and silence the voices of opposition in a discriminatory regime.’’
– Washington Post