Manhigut Yehudit in the News

Haaretz: Kislev 21 5766 (Dec 22, 05)

Feiglin lashes out at critics:
I am the center, not the extreme
By Haaretz Service

Moshe Feiglin, leader of the hardline Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud, said Tuesday that he represents the centrist element of the party, not the extreme, and that there was an element of anti-Semitism in cabinet minister Limor Livnat's calls for his ouster from the party.

Soon after polls showed Feiglin scoring a third-place finish in Monday's Likud leadership primary with 15 percent of the total vote, an agitated Livnat called Feiglin and his followers a "foreign implant into the Likud."

"They are not the Likud, they are not the flesh of our flesh, the blood of our blood," Livnat told reporters Monday night. "We will find a way to oust them."

Speaking to Israel Radio on Tuesday, Feiglin lashed out at his critics. "I am not an extremist. I am, in fact, bringing to the center of the political map the only political solution to our existence here."

According to Feiglin, his campaign "was the precise expression of the vast majority of Likud members.

"This is the exact stance of the Likud in its platform and its constitution. It is not extremist. This is the center. This is what is sane."

Feiglin said Livnat's remarks were motivated by her poor showing in the early stages of the Likud leadership race. He said she viewed him and his support as a threat.

"With all due respect, I also think that there is a certain small element of anti-Semitism here. I have been in the Likud for eight years already, and I haven't seen any such demonization efforts directed at any other element. We are all loyal members of the Likud, and renew our membership every year.

"Let's put the cards on the table: I believe that if I didn't have a kippa and beard, this demonization would not exist, and it's about time to put an end to this nonsense."

Feiglin suggested that Livnat's comments had more to do with her standing in the Likud than withb ideology. "You know, there was this lady named Limor Livnat who declatred her candidacy, and was the first to withdraw it when she saw that she would receive just one percent, far, far behind Feiglin.

"So who is the Likud? I give expression to the Likud. I don't take seriously people who see a my ideas and their sweeping support as a personal political threat to them."

Olmert: Netanyahu a 'captive boy'
Kadima Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, until recently an arch-foe of Benjamin Netanyahu within the Likud, launched a blistering attack Tuesday on the new leadership of the Likud, saying that the Netanyahu-led party had become an extreme rightist faction.

Olmert said Netanyahu was the "captive boy" of hardline party ideologues Uzi Landau and Feiglin, and that he identified with both of them.

"This is a Likud of 'not one inch,' this is a Likud of friction with the whole world, this is a Likud without a diplomatic horizon, with no hope for the public," Olmert told Israel Radio.

Referring directly to Landau, Olmert said "the policy fanaticism, the uncompromising extremism, is so powerful, so rightist, so lacking in any compromise.

"Uzi, in contrast to others, is a true ideologue. He and Feiglin are twins. And Bibi is their captive boy. Not all that captive, because he identifies with both of them."