TEL AVIV – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed the controversy surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition deal with a Jewish extremist party as not being the U.S.’s concern.
Netanyahu has forged a union between the the national-religious Jewish Home party and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), led by followers of the American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, whose controversial party Kach was deemed a terror group. Before his assassination, Kahane called for the annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of the Arabs living there.
The move drew widespread condemnation from political rivals and Jewish groups, both in Israel and overseas.
“We’re not about to … interfere in an election of a democracy. Election campaigns are tough. We’ll allow the Israeli people to sort this out,” Pompeo told CNN.
“I’m confident that when the election is over, the United States will continue to have a strong, important, very, very deep relationship with Israel that protects the American people and benefits Israel as well,” he added.
The merger was ostensibly a bid to prevent right-wing votes from going to waste in the April 9 elections, since parties need to clear a 3.25 percent threshold to be allowed into the Knesset.
The American Jewish Committee on Thursday called Otzma Yehudit’s views “reprehensible.”
“They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel,” a statement from the AJC said.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Friday said it would not meet with members of Otzma Yehudit.
“AIPAC has a longstanding policy not to meet with members of this racist and reprehensible party,” it said.
Rabbi Benny Lau, a prominent national-religious rabbi, likened voting for the party to voting for Nazis.
A U.S. Reform rabbi said it was like “welcoming” the Ku Klux Klan into the American government.
The Zionist Federation of Australia on Monday slammed Otzma Yehudit’s “deplorable racist views which are entirely inconsistent with the principles on which the modern State of Israel was founded.”
Netanyahu responded by calling out the left for its “hypocrisy,” because it had allowed Islamists to enter the Knesset.
“What hypocrisy and double standards by the left,” he wrote on Facebook. “They’re condemning [the formation of] a right-wing majority bloc with right-wing parties, while the left acted to bring extreme Islamists into the Knesset to create a majority bloc.”
Otzma Yehudit includes Baruch Marzel, who served as Kahane’s secretary in the Knesset; Bentzi Gopstein, a former student of the extremist rabbi who is facing charges of incitement to violence, racism and terrorism; and Itamar Ben Gvir, an attorney who was active as a teen in Kahane’s outlawed Kach party and now represents Jewish terror suspects.
According to Ben Gvir, there is no justification for the condemnation his party has received in recent days.
“All they have to say is ‘Rabbi Kahane, Rabbi Kahane’ because they have nothing on us,” Ben Gvir said in an interview with The Times of Israel.
He admitted to being a “student” of Kahane’s works and accused naysayers of carrying out a character assassination on him.
“They’re bringing up things that are from more than 30 years ago, when it’s clear that we’re not in the same place anymore,” Ben Gvir said.
Ben Gvir added that his party does not call for the expulsion of all Arabs in Israel, only those who are disloyal to the state.
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