Tel-Chai Nation

This is honestly ridiculous. The heads of the Jewish Home party are breaking away to form "The New Right":

The Israeli political map changed dramatically Saturday night, when Bayit Yehudi leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked announced that they were leaving the party and forming a new religious and secular partnership that will run in the April 9 election.

Speaking at Tel Aviv press conference called after years of contemplating the move, Bennett and Shaked announced their their party would be called HaYemin HeHadash, which means the new Right. At the press conference, Bennett and Shaked vowed to take votes away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

“We greatly appreciate Netanyahu and his contributions over the years to Israel but the real Right, the whole nationalist camp, cannot be captives of one person,” Bennett said. “With HaYemin Hehadash, Israel is winning again.”

Bennett criticized Netanyahu for calling an election a month after saying that the security situation made holding elections irresponsible and for not taking seriously his former party’s concerns about the threat from Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“The impact of Bayit Yehudi has been lost and has not returned,” Bennett lamented. “The prime minister thinks religious-Zionists are in his pocket and no matter how much he harms the religious-Zionists they will continue going with him.”

Bennett and Shaked will formally break off from the Bayit Yehudi faction, taking along with them MK Shuli Moallem Refaeli to the new party, because three MKs were needed to legally leave a faction of eight. HaYemin HeHadash will alternate between religious and secular candidates on its list.

I can't help but wonder if they're doing this deliberately to undermine the right-wing. I'll admit that there are some members of the Jewish Home who aren't very reliable, but even Bennett himself seems rather pretentious to me, and he shouldn't be saying they want to draw votes away from the Liukd. One of the members of the Jewish Home is the following:

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, the head of the National Union Party, which ran with Bayit Yehudi in recent elections, said he thought Bennett and Shaked had made a mistake. He vowed to strengthen religious Zionism by merging Bayit Yehudi and the National Union.

Oh, the National Union, the ones who originally undermined prior elections? Okay, I admit, they're awful. But that doesn't mean Bennett and Shaked had to break away like this. What they should've done was sever any cooperation with National Union members if they're proving unreliable. And again, they shouldn't be attacking just the Likud at a time like this.

Labels: islam, Israel, jihad, Knesset, terrorism