The Jewish Home party, headed by Naftali Bennett, is poised to become Israel’s largest third-largest political party with up to 15 seats, just behind center-left Labor. The party, headed by charismatic Naftali Bennett, is expected to join the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We hope to be such a large faction that it will be difficult to form a government without us,” the Jewish Home party Parliament member Uri Orbach said. “Party leader Naftali Bennett is attracting voters who never supported us before, including secular voters.”
Bennett, 40, is a charismatic speaker who sold his Internet company for $ 145 million several years ago. His parents are American immigrants to Israel and he speaks fluent English. He ran the Council of Jewish Settlers for the past few years.
The party’s current campaign is heavy on social media. They just passed 100,000 “likes” on their Facebook page. Bennett is also appealing to Americans immigrants to Israel. In Hebrew, the word used for moving to Israel is “aliya,” or moving upward.
“My parents are from California, they chose aliya out of Zionism and love for Israel,” Bennett says on his English Facebook page. “Habayit Hayehudi (the Jewish Home party) is your home because it represents the same values and ideas that led you to make aliya. It’s time to take the message of your aliya to the entire country.”
The party is an Orthodox Jewish party with hard-line positions toward the Palestinians. The platform calls for annexing some 60 percent of the West Bank to Israel — a position that directly contradicts the international community’s demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders.
Polls show an estimated 40 percent of the Jewish Home party’s support is coming from secular Israelis, a surprise considering that the party’s platform is clearly Orthodox Jewish. It states its mission as “to restore the Jewish-Zionist essence to the State of Israel and its people.”
The party platform also says that “the state of Israel is a Jewish state governed by democracy. We will act to strengthen the Jewish nature of the state, and we will fight against those who attempt to transform Israel into ‘a state of its citizens.’ At the same time, we will uphold the rights of Israel’s minorities, among them the Arab minority.”
In the latest polls, Netanyahu’s joint slate of Likud and Israel Is Our Home is down to 34 seats, followed by Labor at 16, and the Jewish Home party with 14. That’s a significant achievement for a party that has only 5 seats in the 120-seat Parliament.
The Likud is clearly running scared. Its latest campaign warns voters that if they vote for Bennett or another right-wing party, the center-left could form the next government. They hope that scare tactics will bring voters back to the Likud. According to Israel’s parliamentary democracy, after the elections, Israel’s president asks one of the larger parties to try to form a governing coalition. That is traditionally the largest party, but the president can choose whomever he believes has the best chance of forming a coalition. And while the Likud may be losing votes, the center and center-left parties have little chance of being able to cobble together a 61-seat majority.
Some Israeli analysts say many supporters of the Jewish Home party are registering a protest vote.
“In every election since 1977, the under-30 crowd didn’t like politicians and they registered a protest vote,” Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert on domestic politics at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) think tank, said. “At the same time, voters may come back to the large parties as the election approaches.”
Orbach says he expects that his party will be part of the coalition. He said they would like to take charge of the Housing or Education ministries. Housing would enable them to expand building in land Israel acquired in 1967.
That could increase tensions with the Obama administration which has strongly condemned recent Israeli plans to expand building. The State Department spokeswoman this week urged Israelis and Palestinians to restart peace talks as soon as possible. Orbach says the Jewish Home party does not believe peace is possible.
“The Palestinians do not want to live next to us but in place of us,” Orbach insists. “We are not willing to take existential risks. If it is a choice of living in peace or living, we will choose to live.”
