Hawk flies back to his roots
HAWKISH Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, whose Australian family made aliyah in the 1960s, is making his first visit to Australia this month.
HAWKISH Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, whose Australian family made aliyah in the 1960s, is making his first visit to Australia this month.
Named after his great-grandfather Moishe Zalman Feiglin – one of the pioneers of the Jewish community in the Shepparton fruit-growing district – the Israeli-born former MK recently departed Likud after low polling for him in the party’s primaries and, after this year’s March election, founded Zehut, a right-wing political party.
Feiglin is on record as opposing the surrender of any settlements; advocating for the removal of the authority of the Waqf, the Arab body running Jerusalem’s Temple Mount precinct; and expressing support for the views of murdered firebrand Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defence League, a vigilante organisation that is outlawed in Israel.
During last year’s war in Gaza, he called for Israel to retake Gaza and for those residents unwilling to accept Israeli sovereignty to be paid to leave the country.
A prolific political commentator, Feiglin wrote in his 2005 book, War of Dreams, that his program was “Israeli citizenship to Jews only [and] the immediate expulsion of any person of another people who claims any sort of sovereignty in the Land of Israel”.
Feiglin led the Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) movement, which he brought into Likud as a faction of the party’s right wing in 2000, and sat in the Knesset for Likud from 2013-15 as deputy speaker.
An Israel Defence Forces captain who served during the First Lebanon War in 1982, he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in 1997 on charges of sedition by the Israeli Supreme Court after his involvement in a mass public rally two years earlier against the Oslo Accords which blocked major Israeli traffic arteries. The sentence was later commuted to community service.
Organisers of Feiglin’s Australian tour stated that his Zehut party brings “his message of authentic Jewish identity, personal freedom (cherut), and meaning (mashma’ut) to the Israeli public”.
“He has outlined comprehensive and realistic solutions to Israel’s most pressing problems, including dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, dealing with the missile threat from Gaza and Lebanon, solving the internal security problem, solving the housing crisis in Israel [and] substantially reducing the cost of living.”
Moshe Feiglin will speak on Sunday, October 11, 8pm, at Werdiger Hall, 90 Hotham Street, East St Kilda. For details, contact Rabbi Yoni Reyder on 0425 442 770 or email admin@bcod.com.au.
PETER KOHN
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