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Moshe Feiglin renews Zehut, his Identity Party, to rebuild the country.
By JUDITH SEGALOFF JANUARY 26, 2025 19:04
MOSHE FEIGLIN at a Zehut party event in Tel Aviv, 2019.
(photo credit: FLASH90)
‘I never left politics,” clarified Moshe Feiglin in an interview with the Magazine this past week, “although I left the Likud.”
Established in 2015, Feiglin’s party, Zehut, which means “identity,” fell short of the electoral threshold required for Knesset representation in the April 2019 vote.
“We almost had all the votes needed – eight or nine Knesset mandates, but too many sectors from both sides of the political map were afraid of the spirit of freedom, identity, that we brought, and they got together to scare away voters. We were missing 14,000 votes.”
Before the September 2019 elections, Zehut withdrew from the race upon an agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The deal included a promise to implement some of Zehut’s economic and cannabis reforms, as well as a potential ministerial position for Feiglin in the next government; but by December 2019, Zehut announced it would not participate in the third election cycle, planning instead to run when the society was more receptive to its platform.
During the past year, Feiglin has rebuilt his political party.
“I believe that this time, things will be different because our constituency comes from very wide and diverse circles – religious, nonreligious, even Center-Left – and they understand more now because of the 7th of October.
“Reality proved how correct I was when I said on the 8th of October that this will not be a real war; it will end with our soldiers’ blood and the release of thousands of murderers,” he said.
Feiglin’s grandson Sgt. Yair Levin, 19, a member of the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, was killed on June 10, 2024, during military operations in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He was one of four IDF soldiers who died on that day when a booby-trapped building they were inspecting collapsed after multiple explosions.
“At the beginning of this last round (it’s hard for me to call it a war), I found myself trying to explain the mistakes that were being made. I had a conflict in what I was saying while being part of the party that was bringing a disaster upon us. I knew for sure where it was leading, and I did everything I could to make sure people understood the danger.
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“I could no longer talk clearly within the Likud,” he asserted. “Instead, I reopened my own party that soon will be running for Knesset.
“The army didn’t really want to go in on Oct. 7,” he explained. “They wanted to create a safe zone around Gaza and to jump into negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a ‘show’ of a war because [otherwise] he would have lost his base. So now, after 15 months, he got what he wanted from the beginning.
“The direction that Israel has taken since Oslo – less and less Jewish identity, more and more progressive identity – is reflected in the justice system and in all the security circles,” he elaborated. “Fundamentally, if you don’t have your identity, you don’t have your freedom.”
‘Shtetl with an air force’
Man Searches for Identity: The Journey to Identity and Liberty as an Israeli Message, the new Hebrew-language book authored by Feiglin, explores the relationship between identity and freedom, and how certain progressive concepts actually are the antithesis of core identification.
The book jacket reads: “Progress and Islam embrace a common goal, the destruction of Israel and its universal message, the annulment of the vision of identity and freedom, under the wings of the one God, and the elimination of the Ten Commandments – the foundation of all human civilization – brought to the world by the Jews.”
He said, “What we saw in the past 15 months is an incredible generation, thinking as a nation. Many are Religious Zionist, but the leadership lost their ability to see Israel as a nation. Instead, we are living in an armed ghetto – basically, a shtetl with an air force. That behavior invites the next pogrom.”
He said that the party’s manifesto, created in 2019, is even more relevant after Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Zehut manifesto, “Our national identity is based on being sons and daughters of the historic People of Israel, the People of God, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – a nation which was established at the exodus from slavery in Egypt to carry the message of freedom to humanity for all generations, throughout the ages, forever.
“Our mission,” the manifesto continues, “is to create in this incredible generation a new leadership connected to our national identity that this generation deserves. A leadership that will not let their blood be shed.”
Feiglin said he saw the writing on the wall, the mistakes being made because we were not embracing our identity, from the very outset of the war.
“We should have used the first 10 to 15 days to do anything we needed to do in Gaza,” he stated. “But Netanyahu waited three weeks to see what the goals of the war would be, and then he waited for the American aircraft carriers. He promised his voter base that this would be a complete victory, but he had no plan to do so.”
And that is where, Feiglin said, our leadership failed.
“The body follows the head,” he further explained. “Zoom out from politics and see what the discussion is really about. Are we an independent nation or just another community in the Diaspora? If you still think like a community in the Diaspora, you lick your wounds and pay what you can to release your loved ones – you don’t think about winning land.
“The 7th of October was the result of Oslo, the Disengagement, leftist ideology, lack of ability of the right wing to create an alternative to the left-wing framework.”
He asserted that the right wing in Israeli politics never created an alternative to erase the Oslo agreement.
“They never stood up and said, ‘Send the Palestinian Authority out of our land!’” he explained. “They never stood up and said, ‘This is our land.’ The right wing cannot erase Oslo, which has been festering in our country for 30 years – and they have never even tried to reverse the direction of Oslo.”
He referred to Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech, in which the prime minister actually endorsed the rights of the Palestinians to have a state.
“Netanyahu already proved that his words are meaningless. It’s not what he says, it’s where his shoes are walking. If you believe that this is your land, you don’t give a speech that recognizes your enemy’s right to your land,” he asserted.
Netanyahu is not the main problem, he continued.
“Netanyahu is about survival – juggling all the balls in the air. He is very talented and smarter than everybody; but when there is no direction, all the balls fall on your head. There is no direction,” he stressed.
“OUR PROBLEM is the fear of the Jewish majority here in Israel.
“Most supporters of the Likud are religious or traditional Jews. This majority gives Netanyahu the leadership again and again, but they never believed that we can create leadership in the State of Israel that satisfies their Jewish identity. We are here to be a light to the nations... to create from our belief a modern state that functions according to that vision.
“So they go to the synagogue and maybe say a prayer, but they vote Netanyahu.”
He pointed out that since Oslo, there has been less and less Jewish identity, and more and more progressive identity, in the justice system and in all the security circles. “What we are facing is exactly the opposite of what the Nation-State Law was supposed to affirm.”
“We all know that in the Middle East there are two options for survival,” he said. “You either sit down to the meal or you are part of the menu. Netanyahu sent a message to all the wolves on our borders and to our friends in Europe and America.
“Israel is on the menu. He sent our soldiers into the booby traps, into buildings.”
The role of the US
But what about the Biden administration’s pressure? What if the US had refused to help finance our Iron Dome? Where would we be?
He answered that this is precisely the problem. We were on the defensive.
“Don’t shoot down the missiles,” he asserted. “Instead, flatten the regions where they are shooting from. The concept of the Iron Dome is like building a Maginot Line.”
The Maginot Line was a series of bunkers, fortresses, tunnels, and fortifications built along the German, Swiss, and Italian borders by the French in the 1930s as a strategic method of deflecting a German invasion. Failing to seal off the Belgian border, the Maginot Line turned out to be a strategic failure, as Germany invaded in an entirely different direction.
“Because our leadership stopped thinking as a nation and just thought about themselves as a Diaspora community, they built walls, kinetic walls, and rocket defense systems like the Iron Dome.”
This attitude, Feiglin said, limits our fighting ability.
“The Americans and the Biden administration are not the problem. We made ourselves the doormats of all the forces around us and of Europe and the Americans. It became easy for the Biden administration to control Netanyahu and the Israeli army.
“We need a fundamental change if we don’t want a repeat,” he said.
“That means changing our leadership, but also changing our conscience. We need a leadership that has a deep belief in the God of Israel and in the people of Israel. Judaism is not just a nationality. It is a faith. We are the only nation that by its very definition is both physical and metaphysical, and leadership should exemplify that power.”
When asked about newly installed US President Donald Trump’s role in the current ceasefire, Feiglin didn’t think he was instrumental in the decision to make a bad deal.
“I do not believe that Trump forced Netanyahu’s hand,” he said. “When Trump understood that Netanyahu had no intention of capturing Gaza and seizing control of the situation, he merely told him. ‘OK, then, so cut a deal.’
“Netanyahu had no plan to take over Gaza because he didn’t believe that Gaza belonged to us, and he didn’t see the war as an opportunity of releasing our land from the ‘Islamo-nazis’ to do exactly what we did in Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Beersheba – send the enemy away and build a Jewish presence.
“He invited the pressure from Trump to end this war, 15 months after it started, with hundreds of our soldiers getting killed.”
Feiglin warned that we must take the Palestinians seriously when they talk about “from the river to the sea.”
“They are clear,” he said. “They are talking about killing every Jew on every square inch of the Holy Land.”
The Zehut party
Feiglin said that the Zehut platform is a very realistic dream.
“All we need to do is take over Gaza, open the gates and show them the way to the door, but you cannot do it if you are following the Oslo model. We need to decide that this is our land, conduct a real war – throw out the terrorists. Let them go to Europe, South America, Dubai.”
“Israel is entitled to its own interests,” he said about American and European interference in our war efforts. “We should not be bowing to American interests. We can join forces when we have common interests, but we cannot bend and give up our interests for the Americans or for anyone else, including a deal with Saudi Arabia.”
He pointed out that as most of the murderers who perpetrated 9/11 hailed from Saudi Arabia, it was unlikely that there would ever be true peace in the Middle East.
“I have no problem doing deals, but thinking that peace in the Middle East will be the result is ridiculous. We should not look for peace. We should look for respect and working toward common interest. I don’t want peace with them. Jews melt – and peace is used as a weapon against us.”
He also pointed out that during our so-called peace treaty with Egypt, it has amassed a tremendous army, the largest it has ever had.
“Islamic ideology is no less hateful than Nazi ideology. That is why so many countries have banned or are limiting the building of mosques. We need to look reality in the eye and understand what we are dealing with.
“What we got on Oct. 7 was much worse than what the Nazis did to the British and the Europeans. They did what they did with religious zeal and pride. Islamic ideology is worse than Nazism.”
When asked how he would deal with the disagreements about judicial reform, Feiglin said quite simply that he would revert to democracy.
“Once every 10 years the people of Israel should vote for the judges on the Supreme Court,” he suggested. “I’ve run this by even extreme leftist leaders – none of them could say it was a bad idea.
“We have to remember who we are,” he affirmed. “We are the majority, and growing demographics will make our numbers even bigger.
“We have nothing to worry about. As long as we embrace who we are.”
English (US) ·