The Jewish Home Party and Their Quest To Completely Stop a Palestinian State

The world is waiting on the Israeli elections and it appears that the Jewish Home Party (Habayit Yehudi) is poised to bring a new sense of defiance to Israel - a defiance to the Islamists and their appeasers across the world - a party that is committed to stopping the misfit so-called "Palestinians" from the most illegitimate claim on earth, namely their called for statehood.

Let's all hope and pray it happens.

The story comes from The Telegraph.

Israel's new political star Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party determined to stop Palestinian state


Naftali Bennett, the new star of Israel's political world, looks set to lead the Jewish Home party to a stunning success on Tuesday that could put him in government. Afterwards he will use all his power to block a Palestinian state, enraging Arabs and risking international isolation for Israel.

Israel's new rock star politician Naftali Bennett strode into the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem flashing smiles at adoring supporters, as shutters clicked and excited whispers rippled through the audience.

On Tuesday, according to the polls, the voters will make him the second most powerful man in Israel. He will be either a formidable opposition leader, committed to blocking any attempt to give up land for peace, or more likely a partner in a coalition government, pushing a set of far Right policies that enrage Palestinians and risk a breakdown in Israel's already strained alliance with America.

Mr Bennett, 40, leader of the Jewish Home party (Habayit Yehudi), is the first Right-wing hipster in Israeli politics, campaigning in jeans and joking in Hebrew slang, and in an otherwise lacklustre general election campaign, he gets an excited reaction that rivals can only dream of. But although the image is casual, the hard line message is one that no other mainstream politician has ever dared to put forward.

"I am vehemently against a Palestinian state within the Land of Israel," he told the audience, gathered at the synagogue to hear candidates debate.

They roared with enthusiasm.

There is relative calm in the occupied territories, he told them. "We can ruin all this by establishing another Muslim state in our midst, like we did in Gaza, and get another 100 years of misery."

The audience loved it. The candidate from the left-wing Meretz party was booed when she outlined her intention of reviving an old plan to get the peace process going.

Israel's voters are used to choosing from a list of bearded rabbis, party hacks with corruption charges hanging over them, and earnest Left-wingers who make them feel guilty. Mr Bennett's message of unrepentant Jewish nationalism has blown through Israel's dusty political world, reaching places where nobody thought it ever would.

Eight weeks ago, at the start of the campaign, hardly anyone in Israel had heard of Naftali Bennett, a former commando in the elite counter-terrorism unit, Sayeret Matkal, who built a web company and sold it for $145 million before becoming an overnight political sensation.

The party that he leads won just three seats in the last election – Mr Bennett himself has never been elected – and it was just another one of a fringe of competing far Right parties. Their influence has been slowly growing for years but none has ever managed a political breakthrough.

Naftali Bennett looks like the man to do it. Nobody doubts that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be re-elected at the head of his own right-of-centre bloc. But on recent forecasts this grouping - his own Likud party, plus Avignor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu - is likely to win only around 32 seats instead of the 45-plus the prime minister had hoped for before the challenge from Jewish Home.

To rule, Mr Netanyahu will need to put together a new Likud-led coalition, drawing from among a dozen or so smaller parties that will be elected. And if Mr Bennett's party continues to perform strongly he could emerge as head of the second largest party in the Knesset, with the clout to insist on senior cabinet post from Mr Netanyahu.

Mr Bennett has called for Israel to annex most of the West Bank, which would put a final nail in the coffin of the peace process. He strikes horror into moderate Israelis who still cling to the hope it could be revived.

The secret of his electoral success is his appeal to a new type of right-wing voter. The parties to the Right of Mr Netanyahu – himself widely seen as the most Right-wing leader ever to be Israel's prime minister – are dominated by Russian emigrants, orthodox religious Jews, and zealous settlers from the occupied West Bank.

But Jewish Home is also winning support among young, secular Israelis who would never have voted for a far Right party in the past - partly by using new social media to get its message out to the young, instead of relying on rabbis preaching to the converted to get its message out.

"I like him," said Sammy Magid, 19, a student. "He stands up for Israel and will stand up to the West – like Menachem Begin did." Mr Bennett, born in Israel to emigrants from San Francisco, looks and sounds as if he belongs to the 21st century, unlike most leaders of Israel's far-Right parties.

"He is the kind of guy his young supporters would like to be," one of his Likud rivals said. "He's an army hero, a business success, a patriot who says what people think about the peace process. But he's also an opportunist and if he wants to be prime minister one day he will have to tack to the centre." He rose in politics as a member of Likud, and was soon talent-spotted and given a job in Mr Netanyahu's office, while he was in opposition.

The job didn't last long and he soon left. Neither man has ever discussed this episode, but it is whispered that Mr Bennett's ego was too big for him to make a willing bag carrier for the boss: they fell out, and he left on bad terms.

Soon the bag carrier could be dictating terms to Mr Netanyahu, the dominant force in Israeli politics. Bibi, as Mr Netanyahu is known from his childhood nickname, will not enjoy the sensation of needing the support of a former protégé he got rid of.

With days to go before the vote, Jewish Home has begun running campaign adverts with pictures of Mr Bennett and Mr Netanyahu together, to Likud's fury. Mr Bennett has promised to be a "third hand" on the wheel.

Mr Netanyahu's response, in a Jerusalem newspaper, was telling. "If you ever drove a car, you know that you have to have two steady hands of one driver on the wheel, and if you start having other people grab the wheel, pretty soon the car overturns."

The electoral alliance between his Likud party and its coalition ally, Mr Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party, looked like a masterstroke when it was announced. But because success is assured, many supporters feel able to cast a vote for somebody new and even more hard-line than the prime minister - who, at least in public, still supports what remains of the peace process.

What really changed the game for Jewish Home was the brief Gaza war in November, which confirmed the feeling of many Israelis that there never could be a trustworthy independent state of Palestine - the objective of all negotiations for more than a decade.

"What you see now among Israeli voters is disillusionment with the two-state solution, that's why voters have abandoned the Left and support the Right-wing," said Amit Segal, a political commentator for Channel 2 television. In Israeli politics, Right wing means tough on security, and Left wing means willing to make concessions for peace.

"Then there's the Arab spring turning into the Arab winter, and so people think it is not a smart idea at the moment to give up the territories," he said.

"But what really helped in places like Tel Aviv, where the Right has never had much success before, was hearing the sirens as Hamas rockets were fired. That's why people are voting for Bennett."

Mr Bennett may be a smooth operator, but his enemies observe that some of his party's fellow candidates seem less polished and use language that puts them further to the Right..

"It is like Enoch Powell heading a party with all the other candidates from the National Front," claimed Haim Baram, a Left-wing commentator.

Many of Jewish Home's candidates are political unknowns from Israel's settlements on the West Bank - the source of much ideological zealotry.

According to their opponents there is support among them for "transferring" Arabs – a polite term for encouraging Palestinians to emigrate by giving them loans to start new lives in South America or Canada.

They will not concede an inch of land for peace, and they don't disguise their hatred for President Obama – they call him by his middle, Arabic, name Hussein – because of US support for a Palestinian state. Jewish Home will pressure Mr Netanyahu to defy America even further and open more West Bank land to settlements.

Jeremy Gimpel, 33, a candidate who is another of the party's rising stars, said it would be "just great" if Israel annexed the West Bank, called Judea and Samaria by settlers. Doing so would cause international uproar, and open Israel to the accusation that it is turning into an Apartheid-style state.

"For 20 years we have been sold the lie that if we give up land we will get peace," Mr Gimpel said. "We are not going to continue making concessions. We will not commit national suicide by giving up Judea and Samaria."

He also brushed aside the growing fear of many Israelis that they are losing US support. "Washington relies on Israel far more than Israel relies on Washington," he said. "If they want to stop helping us, I would like to see them try."

Despite everything, he insisted Jewish Home is moderate. "They keep on trying to paint us as this crazy, radical party," he said. "But we are a party of nationalists, fighting for the rights of Jews in their homeland."