Of all the figures navigating the current chaos on the Israeli right — a fractured landscape where veterans and newcomers alike are frantically forming new parties and seeking alliances to ensure their political survival — the only one to have registered a tangible victory is the unlikeliest of them all: Moshe Feiglin.

While a crowded field of hopefuls — including former IDF general Ofer Winter, former ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, MK Avi Maoz, former communications minister Yoaz Hendel, former deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel and others — are groping in the dark and hovering dangerously close to the electoral threshold or far below it, Feiglin has struck gold.

Previously stuck in that same zone of desperation, Feiglin now finds himself sitting comfortably in second place on a joint slate with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party.

Their new alliance clears the electoral threshold in almost every poll. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc forms the next government, this pact promises Feiglin a major cabinet portfolio and a seat in the high-level security cabinet.

It is the kind of achievement he has dreamed of his entire life, on his quest for the premiership — an office he has fantasized about since the 1990s. That was when he founded the extremist Zo Artzenu (This is Our Land) movement, blocking highways and paralyzing national infrastructure in mass civil disobedience against the Oslo Accords. Now, he is already demanding the defense portfolio, declaring: “If Netanyahu has no choice, he’ll give it to me.”

Feiglin, 64, is one of the most extreme figures on the Israeli right, as well as one of the most stubborn. For 30 years he has risen and fallen: tangling with the law, being convicted of sedition and sentenced to prison, founding political movements and ever-changing alliances, joining Likud, being expelled, and joining again.

He has run against Netanyahu three times for the Likud party leadership and penned innumerable books and manifestos.

In recent years, he successfully masked his fundamentalism behind a libertarian facade, waging a vocal campaign for personal freedom and the legalization of soft drugs. This somewhat neutralized his fanatical image, drawing in new audiences with whom he hoped to forge a Jewish political connection.

In his current incarnation, Feiglin serves as chairman of the Zehut party, which he founded a decade ago (though he briefly departed it). Today, he is the political partner of Smotrich, who cannot stand him but reluctantly accepted him as No. 2 on his Religious Zionism slate.

Fundamentalist........

© The Times of Israel