[Thread]

Some thoughts on the merger of @bezalelsm’s Religious Zionist Party with the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit - a move pushed and encouraged by @netanyahu:

Netanyahu, panicked that fragmentation on the Israeli right would result in too few parties clearing the electoral threshold, today succeeded in persuading the new Religious Zionist Party of Bezalel Smotrich to run together with Otzma Yehudit.

This is no run-of-the-mill, ‘Israeli parties merging’ story; Otzma is the direct political descendant of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach Party, banned from Israeli politics in the late eighties for overt racism.

Netanyahu is no Kahanist. But he is a political opportunist - an opportunist with an ever-decreasing set of scruples. This was simply a repugnant act of political expediency, in the same vein as his willingness to demonize the Attorney General, the police and the media.