Baruch Marzel
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-born Orthodox Jew, lives in the Jewish community of Hebron
Committee of The Jewish Community of Hebron
The Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron is the municipal body of the Israeli settlers of the city of Hebron, on the West Bank. The community constitutes a Regional Committee, included the Har Hebron Regional Council. The mayor/spokesman of the community is David Wilder. Beit HaShalom, , was...
in Tel Rumeida
Tel Rumeida
Tel Rumeida is a tell most identified as the location of biblical Hebron. Today, it is the site of a Jewish Israeli settlement. The most famous resident is Baruch Marzel, a rightist activist and head of the Jewish National Front, who lives there with his family...
with his wife and nine children. He is the leader of the Religious Zionism
Religious Zionism
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Jewish religious faith...
-orientated Jewish National Front party. He claims he was the "right hand man" of assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, acting as spokesman for the American rabbi's Kach
Kach and Kahane Chai
Kach was a far-right political party in Israel. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1970s, and following his Jewish nationalist ideology , the party entered the Knesset in 1984 after several electoral failures...
organization for ten years until it was outlawed in Israel and the US as a terrorist organization. The mainstream Israeli press regularly describes him as an "extreme right-wing activist".
Political activity
The Supreme Court of IsraelSupreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...
deemed Kach "racist" and disqualified it from the 1988 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1988
Elections for the twelfth Knesset were held in Israel on 1 November 1988. Voter turnout was 79.7%.-Results:1 Five members of the Likud left to form the Party for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea; after two returned, the party was renamed the New Liberal Party...
because it advocated the forced expulsion of the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
citizens of Israel from Israel.
Marzel was elected head of the Kach movement's secretariat after Kahane was assassinated in New York. A splinter group from Kach, Kahane Chai
Kach and Kahane Chai
Kach was a far-right political party in Israel. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1970s, and following his Jewish nationalist ideology , the party entered the Knesset in 1984 after several electoral failures...
, was led by Kahane's son Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane
Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane
Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane was a rabbi and the son of Rabbi Meir Kahane.Born in New York City, he emigrated to Israel with his family at the age of four, in 1971...
. In 1994 both groups were designated terrorist organisations in Israel and the US following the groups’ statements in support of Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician and mass murderer who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125....
’s massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron.
In 2003, Marzel joined Herut and Paul Eidelberg's Yamin Israel
Yamin Israel
Yamin Yisrael was a minor right-wing political party in Israel.-Background:The party was founded on 24 July 1995 when Shaul Gutman broke away from Moledet. It ran in the 1996 elections, but failed to cross the electoral threshold of 1.5% and did not win a seat.In the 2003 elections the party ran a...
party to become the number two candidate on the party list, after Michael Kleiner
Michael Kleiner
Michael Kleiner is an Israeli politician and leader of Herut – The National Movement.He first entered the Knesset in 1981 as a Likud parliamentarian but, upon then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relinquishing Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, Kleiner split off from the Likud along with Benny...
, in the bid to enter the 16th Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
session. The election advertisements featured him prominently with the traditional Hebrew saying "Hazak U'Baruch" (literally strong and blessed), a pun on Marzel's first name. Herut narrowly missed the minimum number of votes needed to enter the Knesset.
In 2004, he founded the Jewish National Front and headed its Knesset list in the 2006 elections. During the election campaign, Marzel called on the Israeli military to "carry out a targeted killing against (left-wing figure) Uri Avneri and his leftist collaborators." This came in reaction to Avneri earlier saying on Israeli radio station Kol Israel that the assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi
Rehavam Zeevi
' 20 June 1926 - 17 October 2001) was an Israeli general, politician, and historian who founded the right-wing nationalist Moledet party, mainly advocating population transfer....
was a Palestinian "targeted killing," like the Israeli military's "targeted killings" of Palestinian political leaders. According to Gush Shalom
Gush Shalom
Gush Shalom is an Israeli peace activism group founded and led by former Irgun and Knesset Member and journalist, Uri Avnery, in 1993...
, "the radio did not quote [Avneri's] next words: 'I am against all assassinations, both by Israelis and Palestinians.'"
Ultimately the Jewish National Front received 24,824 votes (0.79%), less than half the minimum 2% required to enter the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
.
In 2009, after fellow party member Michael Ben-Ari
Michael Ben-Ari
Michael Ben-Ari is an Israeli politician, and a current member of the Knesset for the National Union party. He is the first outspoken disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane to be elected to the Knesset. He has a Ph.D in Land of Israel studies.-Biography:...
won a seat in Knesset on the National Union (Israel)
National Union (Israel)
The National Union is an alliance of nationalist political parties in Israel. In the 2009 elections the National Union consisted of four parties: Moledet, Hatikva, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, and Tkuma.-Background:...
list, Marzel agreed to serve as Ben-Ari's parliamentary aid, along with Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been arrested by the Israeli government more than 300 times.
Criminal activity
According to a 2003 report in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth AhronothYedioth Ahronoth
Yedioth Ahronoth is a daily newspaper published in Tel Aviv, Israel. Since the 1970s, it has been the most widely circulated paper in Israel. In a TGI survey comparing the last half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Yedioth Ahronoth retained the title of most widely read newspaper in Israel...
, "Marzel had acquired a police record of some 40 files before he was 30". The report goes on to detail his criminal record, including assaults on Palestinians (one earning him a 12-month suspended prison sentence), an Israeli police officer and Israeli left-wing activist and journalist Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81...
.
Controversies
Marzel has also advocated violence towards homosexuals in Israel, calling for a religious warReligious war
A religious war; Latin: bellum sacrum; is a war caused by, or justified by, religious differences. It can involve one state with an established religion against another state with a different religion or a different sect within the same religion, or a religiously motivated group attempting to...
against them during a radio interview. In 2006, in the days leading up to a planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem, Marzel reportedly stated that "The stabbing incident during last year's parade will seem minor in comparison with what is anticipated this year. We have to declare a holy war". Marzel also was involved in the controversial March 2009 flag parade through Umm al-Fahm
Umm al-Fahm
Umm al-Fahm is a city in the Haifa District of Israel with a population of 43,300, nearly all of whom are Arab citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm mountain ridge, the highest point of which is Mt. Iskander , overlooking Wadi Ara...
. He led protests against the eighth Jerusalem Gay Pride parade of 2010, opining that "[homosexuality] is a disease of choice, and a man can change his taste and his ways. When someone has AIDS they tell them not to infect others, so why are these people allowed to march here in Jerusalem and infect us with their disease?"
In 2006, Marzel sent an open letter to Linor Abergil, asking her not to marry non-Jewish Lithuanian NBA player Šarūnas Jasikevičius
Šarunas Jasikevicius
Šarūnas Jasikevičius is a Lithuanian professional basketball player who plays for Panathinaikos BC. He is a member of the Lithuanian national team, and plays the point guard position.-Early years:...
; a similar open letter was addressed in March 2010 to Israeli model Bar Refaeli
Bar Refaeli
Bar Refaeli is an Israeli model and occasional actress, most known for her modeling work and for her relationship with American actor Leonardo DiCaprio. She was the cover model of the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.-Early life:...
not to marry her non-Jewish boyfriend, American actor Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
. Representing the Lehava
Lehava
Lehava is an Israeli organization whose primary objective is opposing marriages between Jewish women and non-Jewish, particularly Arab, men. It has been described as "far-right-wing" in the Israeli media...
organization which works to prevent intermarriage, Marzel tried to remind Refaeli that she is the descendant of grandmothers who would not dream of seeing her marry a non-Jew and perpetrate assimilation.