Election panel clears Otzma Yehudit for October vote after barring Arab slates day earlier

The Central Elections Committee rejected two attempts to bar Otzma Yehudit from the October 27 election on Thursday, one day after it voted to exclude Ra’am, the Joint List and two Joint List candidates under the same constitutional provision.

Nineteen committee members opposed disqualifying Otzma Yehudit, 10 supported the move, and one abstained.

The two days of hearings placed Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset at the center of the election campaign. It permits a party or candidate to be barred on three grounds: rejecting Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state; inciting racism; or supporting armed struggle against Israel.

The committee voted Wednesday to disqualify Ra’am and the Joint List by identical votes of 18-5, with one abstention, despite the attorney-general’s position that the evidence against both lists was insufficient. It also voted 19-5, with two abstentions, to disqualify Joint List candidate Ofer Cassif, again contrary to her position.

Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh’s case was different. The Attorney-General’s Office said there was a basis for the request after finding his explanations for an article published immediately after the October 7 massacre unsatisfactory. Committee chairman and Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg took the exceptional step of joining the vote, which ended 31-4 in favor of disqualification.

Disqualification application lies on alleged denial of democracy, racial incitement

The cases are not legally identical, and each depends on the evidence presented against that particular party or candidate. They also follow different routes to the Supreme Court: The disqualifications of Cassif and Abu Shehadeh require the court’s approval, while decisions concerning Ra’am, the Joint List and Otzma Yehudit can be challenged through appeals.

Thursday’s applications against Otzma Yehudit, filed separately by the Democrats and by the Zulat Institute for Equality and Human Rights with several former senior public officials, alleged denial of Israel’s democratic character and incitement to racism.

Their central claim was that the committee should consider not only the party’s platform and statements, but what its representatives had done with government power. They alleged that party members had repeatedly undermined the rule of law and weakened democratic institutions.

They also cited material they said demonstrated sustained incitement against Arab citizens, including alleged identification with the outlawed Kach movement, support for a man convicted of support for Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was convicted of murdering three members of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family in the 2015 Duma arson attack.

Otzma Yehudit rejected the allegations as a political effort to remove it from the election. Ben-Gvir accused the Democrats of trying to “eliminate” him politically and said the party would continue its campaign.

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara opposed disqualification, but warned that the evidence was highly troubling and brought the party dangerously close to Section 7A’s prohibited territory.

The legal gap between approaching that boundary and crossing it is deliberately wide. The Supreme Court has reserved disqualification for extreme cases supported by a “critical mass” of clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. The prohibited objective must be central rather than marginal or theoretical, and generally reflected in repeated efforts to put it into practice.

Ben-Gvir remarks about Arabs 'troubling'

The attorney-general’s representative said most of the statements attributed to Ben-Gvir were old and had already been examined by the Supreme Court. The newer remarks were troubling, she said, but Ben-Gvir had maintained that they were directed at enemies or terrorists rather than Arabs as a group. The evidence therefore did not reach the required threshold for barring the entire list.

Baharav-Miara also separated the election question from pending proceedings over Ben-Gvir’s continued service as national security minister. Allegations that he damaged the independence and nonpolitical character of the police are being examined in those cases; they do not, without more, establish that Otzma Yehudit must be excluded from the election.

The panel separately rejected an attempt to bar the Religious Zionist Party from running in the elections. The Attorney-General’s Office, which supported the decision, posited that there was not enough evidence to move against RZP.

The last request the committee heard on Thursday was from Otzma Yehudit to bar The Democrats from the elections. The committee rejected it 2-14, as coalition representatives boycotted the vote after Ben-Gvir refused to withdraw it.

The individual decisions against Cassif and Abu Shehadeh must now be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Ra’am and the Joint List are expected to appeal their exclusions. Thursday’s decisions approving Otzma Yehudit, RZP and The Democrats will stand unless they are challenged through the separate appeal procedure prescribed for party lists.