Jewish Home’s Merger with Meir Kahane’s Disciples Is a Moral Error—but Not So Grave as One Might Think

Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu made a deal with the Jewish Home party—successor to the old National Religious party—in which he offered it seats in a future government if it agreed to form an electoral alliance with the extreme-right, Kahanist Otzma party. Part of his apparent calculus was that Jewish Home, the main religious-Zionist party, is a natural coalition partner for Likud, but, fractured by the recent defection of its erstwhile leaders, it is in danger of failing to receive the minimum number of votes required to get seats in the Knesset. By uniting with Otzma, Jewish Home can raise the chances that it will pass this threshold in the April elections, and thus help ensure that Netanyahu can form a majority coalition. Unsurprisingly, this move to help Otzma, which on its own would not have the votes to win a seat in the Knesset, has sparked condemnations ranging from the prudent to the hysterical. Shlomo Brody comments: