JERUSALEM (VINnews) — MK Itamar Ben Gvir has selected Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, son of Tzfat chief rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, for the No. 4 slot on his Otzma Yehudit party’s electoral slate.
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Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, who heads the Organization of Community Rabbis, a rabbinical group, is also the grandson of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel.
In a declaration to his organization’s rabbis, Rabbi Eliyahu said that “I have been a partner to a great redemptive program. I see amongst you joy and life, love and dedication to the people of Israel. I want to bring this important voice to the political leadership of Israel, a voice of love and dedication, of a sturdy Torah approach which stands together with tolerance and acceptance of others. I feel that Itamar Ben-Gvir has the will and belief to relate to the periphery, to the chareidi sector and to Baalei Teshuva. This is a great revelation and one that fits us as rabbis of communities. You are the champions of unity and building bridges within the people of Israel.”
Rabbi Eliyahu added that it was a “privilege” to be joining Otzma Yehudit and vowed the party would connect a diverse range of citizens “under a banner of love for Torah, love for the nation of Israel, and love of the land of Israel.”
Ben Gvir hailed Eliyahu as “an authentic representative of the knitted and transparent kippah-wearing public who is fighting for Jewish identity.”
The rabbi has been placed behind Otzma Yehudit director-general Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who has the no. 2 spot, and Almog Cohen, the party’s representative for the Negev and periphery.
Jonathan Pollard ruled out running for the Knesset with Ben Gvir on Sunday after a report said that Ben-Gvir was considering offering him a spot in his Otzma Yehudit party.
“It’s important to me to contribute to the nation of Israel, but my place isn’t in the Knesset. I think I’ve already suffered enough,” Pollard was quoted as saying by Channel 12 news.
As an intelligence analyst in the US Navy’s counterterrorism center, Pollard passed thousands of classified US documents to Israel before he was arrested in 1985, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to life in prison two years later.
He was released in 2015 and came to live in Israel in 2020.
“Religious Zionism” is idolatry, according to gedolim going all the way back to when Herzl SR”Y started his heresy of Zionism.