Ben Gvir, Netanyahu said planning end to ban on MKs who are racist, reject democracy

Incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a demand by far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir to pass legislation that will end a ban on individuals who incite to racism serving in the Knesset, as well as on parties that do not accept Israel as both Jewish and democratic, according to multiple reports Thursday.

According to unsourced reports in Hebrew news outlets including Channel 12, Haaretz, Ynet and others, parts of clause 7a in Basic Law: The Knesset — which states that incitement to racism or rejecting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is grounds for disqualification from running for parliament — will be removed from the country’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws through legislation.

Likud has yet to finalize the deal with Otzma Yehudit, or any of its deals with right-wing and religious coalition partners, and is set to do so in the next few days.

The move appears to be a bid by Ben Gvir, the Otzma Yehudit leader, to allow far-right allies barred from the Knesset over racist comments and positions to run for parliament in the future.

In 2019, the High Court banned Otzma Yehudit’s Baruch Marzel, Bentzi Gopstein and former party head Michael Ben Ari from participating in elections that year, citing clause 7a.

Gopstein leads the racist Lehava organization, which opposes interfaith and interethnic interaction, relationships and marriages. Marzel led extremist rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party after its founder’s 1990 murder, and has long been identified with the faction’s goal of forcibly cleansing the country of Arabs.

Ben-Ari, a former MK, was warned in August that the state prosecution was mulling charging him for promoting racism toward Arabs over a period of years.

Ben-Ari and Marzel have in recent months criticized Ben Gvir as “ideologically flexible” for seemingly taking less extreme positions during his Knesset run.

While coalition deals are not legally binding, if the agreement is to become reality, the trio would be permitted to run in the country’s next election cycle.

The report said Otzma Yehudit had argued that the law had only been used “unequally to target the right.”

Netanyahu was reported to have agreed to the deal as part of last-minute coalition negotiations, which saw the incoming prime minister announce his success in forming a government just minutes before the midnight deadline Wednesday night, over a month after receiving the mandate from President Isaac Herzog.

Israel’s largest party and a right-wing powerhouse, Likud will be on the left flank of the prime minister-designate’s incoming coalition. Far-right Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism and Noam, as well as Netanyahu’s long-time ultra-Orthodox partners Shas and United Torah Judaism, round out the 64-seat majority coalition in Israel’s 120-member Knesset.

Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this report.