The Jewish National Front (Hebrew: חזית יהודית לאומית, Hazit Yehudit Leumit) is a right-wing Israeli political party. In Israel it is known as Hayil (Hebrew: חי"ל), the acronym of its Hebrew name, which also means Valour.
History
The party was founded in January 2004. Itamar Ben-Gvir is the party spokesman. The party ran in the 2006 elections to the Knesset on a joint list with Professor Paul Eidelberg's Yamin Israel party but received less than the 2% minimum number of votes required to pass the threshold to receive representation.
Background
The Jewish National Front is one of several right-wing parties that have come and gone from Israeli politics since 1981. The first of those factions was Geula Cohen's Tehiya ("Renaissance"), followed by Meir Kahane's Kach ("Thus"), which was banned. Rafael Eitan's Tzomet ("Junction"), and Benny Begin and Michael Kleiner's Herut ("Freedom") that was in the Knesset until 2003. Rehavam Zeevi's Moledet ("Homeland"/"Birthright") is still represented in the Knesset today as part of The National Union. Since Marzel and Ben-Gvir were both senior activists for Kach, the party is very closely identified with Kahanism, the most right-wing stream of nationalism in Israel, though Marzel was number two on Kleiner's Herut list for the 2003 Knesset Elections.
Position
The Jewish National Front calls for a state that is more Jewish in practice than strictly in ceremony, including emplacement of Torah laws in place of the current civil ones after the Jewish majority is increased west of the Jordan River. This will be achieved through motivating mass Jewish immigration to Israel as well as encouraging emigration of Arabs (Israeli and Palestinian) through various incentives. While the party openly calls for the expulsion of Israel's enemies (terrorists, as well as terrorism sympathizers and Jew-haters who call for the destruction of Israel) from the state, it does not advocate the forcible expulsion of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. Marzel's activities as a member of Kach in the past decades have earned him the "street credit" that is needed to unite the extreme right behind his movement.
Few doubt the seriousness of his intention to carry out the platform. The party, in the tradition of its predecessor Kach, is different from Tehiya, Moledet and Tzomet or even Herut in that it places its platform in a context of religious obligation, whereas the others are secular parties built around military figures or pre-independence ideologues like Vladimir Jabotinsky.
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enacted the Gaza and Northern West Bank Withdrawal of September 2005, Marzel placed his group into high gear by holding sensational protests full of polemic about Sharon's intention to forcibly remove Jews from their homes.
2006 elections
As the Gaza Withdrawal succeeded in the end, however, party activists woke up to a new reality present with the possibility of both success and disintegration. Disintegration, because the failed opposition to the Withdrawal was feared to be an indicator of disinterest by the vast majority of Israelis, or even worse of a shift to the left among them. Though massive numbers of Israelis participated in the campaign, the extreme measures undertaken by many prot estors often led to disgust in the media and confrontations with the law and frustrated civilians.
The possibility of a growth in the party's power, however, is based around the current trends occurring among the three rightist parties currently in the Knesset.
- The National Religious Party (NRP) has undertaken an effort of outreach towards the poor, and a focus on socio-economic issues, instead of the expansion of Jewish settlements or opposition to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority which they place as second priorities.
- The NRP sat in Ariel Sharon's government until just prior to the Disengagement Law was passed and consequently disenchanted many of its traditional supporters, is negotiating with the National Union alliance to form a joint list to run in the Knesset, and they are expected to do well if this is implemented.
- The third party, Israel Beytenu, is remaining concentrated on its traditional voter base, immigrants from the USSR with rightist views, and has no reason to abandon that strategy as it gives them two more seats in the Knesset.
Even after Sharon announced his plans to withdraw from the entire Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria, the NRP and National Union parties (including Moledet, Tkuma, and Israel Beytenu) did not immediately resign. They claimed that they would oppose this policy from within the government.
All of these developments have strengthened and increased the hard core of right-wing stalwarts. They are particularly opposed to the National Religious Party's calls for conciliation and unity, and their refusal to condemn the army's cooperation with Sharon during the Withdrawal. They are disappointed with the failure of the National Union, as well Yisrael Beiteinu's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, who headed the National Union, for supporting trading Israeli-Arab land in return for permanently legitimizing Israeli settlement-blocs. (the party opposes any Jewish withdrawal from land west of the Jordan River.) Several loosely related grassroots organizations, including the Jewish National Front, attempted to create a current of disobedience among soldiers to their officers to not execute orders related to the Withdrawal that was deemed highly immoral and a war crime. Arie Eldad, a non-religious Member of Knesset (National Union), was the most prominent politician to advocate civil disobedience and perhaps the only one.
Tactics
The success of the Withdrawal spawned the slogan: "We won't forget, we won't forgive", which the party used for the 2006 election campaign. The main tactic of that grassroots campaign is intimidation against all of the politicians who voted in favour of the Withdrawal, ostracising them from social gatherings of religious Zionism, as well as legal action against them. The most prominent targets of the actions are Sharon, his cabinet ministers, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, and perhaps most effectively Withdrawal Administration director Yonatan Basi, himself a member of a religious kibbutz. With Sharon leaving the Likud Party, it is also considered possible that the National Religious Party, the National Union, and Israel Beytenu will unite with the Likud. Such a development could push even more voters to the edge, especially if Withdrawal supporters succeed in being elected to high rankings in the Likud primaries after Benjamin Netanyahu was voted to head the Likud.
The target demographic for the party are religious, pro-settlement Israelis who feel that the moderates on the Israeli right failed them in the last term when they failed to stop the Withdrawal, or even struggle strongly enough. They will feed off disillusionment toward such figures as NRP chairman Zevulun Orlev, former Finance Minister and Likud chairman candidate Benjamin Netanyahu, and the rest of the heads of the "respectable" right. They draw a great deal of support from young and military-age Israelis who feel that their government is forcing them to fight the very people they were sent to protect rather than terror, as was the message in the anti-Withdrawal campaign. In the 2003 elections Herut fell short of the threshold to enter the Knesset, but was the second closest party to that mark. The threshold to enter the Knesset in the 2006 elections was raised, and although the party was expected to challenge for representation, the party failed to achieve a single mandate.