Editor’s Note: The following is an edited transcript of a recent radio interview with Moshe Feiglin.
How is it that a staunch right wing government evacuated Amona?
It doesn’t surprise me. Let’s not forget that it was a staunch right-wing government that gave away the Sinai and destroyed Gush Katif. Staunch right-wing governments have a track record of destruction greater than all the governments of the Left combined.
How do you address the promises of some government ministers that Amona wouldn’t be evacuated? We even heard a number of times Naftali Bennett, Minister of Education, and others, say that they lulled the residents into complacency. How do you see it?
What is really needed is an alternative to this purposeless Right. If you’re not able when you’re the most Right there is, to prevent an awful destruction like this, maybe it’s really preferable to be in the opposition. If all you can do is blame the High Court, blame the media, blame the Left – pretty soon they’ll blame Trump – then what did we elect you for? It would have been better for the Left to have been in power. In other words, I’m not offering advice to the Right on what it should have said. I say: If you can’t do the job, go home.
If you were a minister in the government, how would you have behaved? I mean, an absolute legal ruling from the High Court was given that doesn’t leave too many question marks.
There are hundreds of absolute legal rulings regarding the Bedouin in the Negev and the Arabs in the Galilee and the Triangle. I’d say, “Okay, I’m starting to carry out all of these legal rulings,” and believe me, with the first destruction, or the second, of a Bedouin village, they’d find a solution – even for Amona.
Let’s not be disingenuous. Since the Right doesn’t have a message, a clear vision, an internal conscience of its own, an alternative to the two-state solution, it isn’t able to stand against the very clear path that the most extreme Left is laying out. When I entered the Knesset, one of the first challenges that stood before me was the decision by Netanyahu to free 2,000 terrorists. I announced then that if this decision were to pass, I, despite being a member of the Likud then, would vote against the budget.
I tried to recruit all the Knesset members from the Jewish Home Party, and the most right-wing members of Likud. No one agreed to back me, and, in the end, I found myself alone voting against the budget of my own party. Some time later, one of the Likud ministers told me that if even two others had joined me, no terrorist would have been freed. So don’t tell me stories. The moment there isn’t a readiness to draw red lines for oneself, Amona becomes just a precedent for what’s to come.
In summary, I would say to you that this Right is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant when it comes to the Regulations Law that of course will never become law, it’s irrelevant when it came to Amona, it’s irrelevant in Ofra, it’s irrelevant when it comes to the Bedouin in the Negev, and it’s irrelevant when it comes to the Sudanese immigrants. It’s simply irrelevant. Go home. Go to the opposition.
You’re saying that the blame is on the Likud and the Jewish Home Party, among others. The government, though, for its part, claims that in the wake of the evacuation of Amona, massive building will be approved in Judea and Samaria. So maybe it’s right that it lost the battle but won the war?
Are you familiar with the deep concept of blah-blah? That’s what this is. We heard that in the past countless times… I think that whoever was taken for a ride in the closed gates of Kfar Maimon needs to understand that his political leaders are leading him on another round, and in short: blah-blah.
So as we wind this up, can you tell us for the benefit of our listeners, in a sentence, what is the message that the Zehut Party under your leadership wishes to bring?
The message of Zehut is that the People of Israel have a comprehensive alternative. Not just for Amona. For all of the problems that we’re dealing with here in the Land of Israel. For housing, transportation, the economy, and yes, also for the problems of policies and our relationship with our neighbors. We have an alternative to the vision of two states. There is a Jewish State in place of a state of all of its citizens, towards which the Left is trying to pull us.
