In New York last Wednesday for an emergency fundraising dinner, Manhigut Yehudit leader Moshe Feiglin – one of three candidates running in the Likud party’s August 14 primaries – expressed tentative hope regarding his prospects. While he would consider anything above 20 or 25 percent a success, Feiglin said “we are in this race to win … and this miracle can really happen if we work hard.”
In addition to Feiglin’s articles, which appear in The Jewish Press and other publications, Manhigut Yehudit plans on spreading its message by calling every one of Likud’s 96,000 members (which amounts to 70,000 homes) over the next three weeks. In addition, 600 buses will bear the slogan: “Feiglin, because he has a God.” (Israeli soccer fans often denigrate a referee by yelling, “He has no God.”)
Speaking to the press before the dinner, Feiglin said he founded Manhigut Yehudit when he realized that Israel’s core problem is “the lack of Jewish identity in the Israeli leadership…. We cannot exist anymore with leaders who cannot answer their own kids the very basic question why to live in Israel. Look where Olmert’s kids live today, look where Rabin’s kids live today….
“Surveys show that most Israelis don’t believe that Israel will exist 20 to 30 years from now.”
Feiglin proceeded to outline his campaign’s five points.
Jewish Education
“We want to offer an hour of Jewish education to every kid in Israel every day: Bible, history, geography etc. Today, most Israeli kids cannot finish the sentence Shema Yisrael. Most of Israeli soldiers at the age of 18 never visited Yerushalayim once in their life. When a soldier is going to war in Lebanon and never saw Yerushalayim – not connected at all to our heritage – what do you think is going to happen when Hizbullah starts firing? Exactly what happened a year ago.”
Family Values
“The Jewish family cell in Israel is being attacked from many directions. It has come to a point where hundreds of families in Israel get divorced because this way they make more money…. Our slogan is ‘Take the Jewish family out of the closet.’”
Security
“Today Jewish lives in Israel are meaningless. Israel just released another 250 murderers from jail. What did they do after all? They killed Jews. So, killing Jews is acceptable. After two years you let him go and then you send your kid to sacrifice his life to catch him again, to release him again.
“We want to bring back the words ‘enemy’ and ‘victory’ to the vocabulary in Israel. Today, there is no enemy. There is ‘terror,’ there is ‘ways to deal with the pressure.’ Exactly a year ago in the summer of 2006 – because these concepts of enemy and victory went out of our vocabulary – we lost.”
Justice System
“Israel’s justice system is about anything but justice. Judges elect themselves and represent the values of the extreme Left. We want to change that system so that judges are elected by the people and represent their values.”
Zero Tolerance Of The Israeli Arab Rebellion
“We want to simply enforce the existing laws on the Israeli Arabs. The story of Azmi Bashara [an Arab MK who recently resigned amidst allegations of treason] is the tip of a huge iceberg that no leader in Israel is willing to deal with…. There are Arab villages, almost cities, where you won’t find a single building that was legally built…. Cars are being stolen by Arabs day and night…. There are certain huge areas in the Galil and the Negev that a girl cannot walk by herself even during the day…. They don’t pay taxes…. Fifty percent of the national insurance goes to the Arabs and they only provide one or one and a half percent.”
Feiglin later told the assembled guests, “If Israel is not led by a person who believes in the God of Israel, and who sees himself as His servant, the country will simply collapse.” He asked the assembled to pray that his message touches the Jewish conscience of Israelis.