One step forward, two stabs in the back: Israel election: Anti-LGBT+ party founder set to win seat (pinknews.co.uk)
"Avi Maoz, founder of the anti-LGBT+ party Noam, is on track to win a seat in the 120-strong Knesset, according to exit polls published Tuesday (23 March). Noam has compared LGBT+ advocates to Nazis and suicide bombers and was founded solely to oppose queer rights. It has long polled well below the 3.25 per cent vote threshold needed to enter the Knesset (parliament), but tactical political alliances may have paved a path to power for it.
Noam and Otzma Yehudit folded into the larger Religious Zionism Party (National Union–Tkuma) to run on the same electoral list in an effort to pass the threshold."
Sonofabitch. A political movement designed to make Trump and the Republicans look good in comparison.
Oh God yes. The whole “Religious Zionism” party is a veritable basket of deplorables, and Maoz is the worst of the bunch. I’m deeply ashamed that my country elected them.
What happened was this: the “natural” leader of that far-right nationalist voting base, for several years, has been one Naftali Bennet, a man who somehow managed to be a total wingnut while still coming off as a more-or-less decent human being (full disclosure: he and I grew up in the same city at the same time with similar backgrounds, and our parents actually socialized with each other on occasion; my Dad still refers to him as “the Bennets’ kid”). Bennet made the cardinal sins of (1) actually resisting Netantayu on rare occasions, and even worse, (2) looking like he could be elected Prime Minister some day, which made him anathema in the Likud. Bibi, in order to clip Bennet’s wings, gathered together every right-wing fringe group too extreme even for Bennet, forged them into a political party, and gave them his full support, even at the expense of his own party. The result is “Religious Zionism”, one of the biggest surprises of the elections, and as nasty a group of villains ever elected to the Knesset.
Bennet hang in there, barely. The big question now is whether he’ll join Netanyahu’s coalition, which is still his ideological home, or whether he still has a shred of dignity and self respect.
From here: Tight election shows Israel’s left is on the rise (msn.com)
“among those elected this week were the Noam Party’s Avi Maoz, an unabashed homophobe, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, of the Jewish Power Party. Mr. Ben-Gvir is an acolyte of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a racist who was banned from Israeli politics by the Supreme Court.”