As Israel prepares for its snap parliamentary elections scheduled for October 27, a radical far-right figure with deep ties to a banned terrorist organization is on the cusp of securing a seat in the Knesset, according to reporting from Israeli outlet Haaretz. Tzachi Eliyahu, an avowed adherent of the Kahanist ideology, has secured the eighth spot on the candidate list of Otzma Yehudit, the far-right party led by current Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Eliyahu’s open alignment with the racist Kach movement is impossible to miss: he carries a tattoo of the movement’s logo on his arm. Kach was founded by Meir Kahane, a radical Jewish supremacist rabbi who was assassinated in New York in 1990. The movement was formally outlawed across Israel and classified as a terrorist organization due to its explicitly racist agenda targeting Palestinians, which included open calls for the forced expulsion of all Palestinians from historic Palestine. The ban came into force in 1994, after Kach supporter Baruch Goldstein carried out a mass shooting that killed 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque.
This is not Eliyahu’s first attempt to enter the Knesset. In 2023, when a vacancy opened up following the resignation of Noam party chairman Avi Maoz, Ben Gvir blocked Eliyahu from taking the seat. At the time, Ben Gvir – who has himself been previously convicted on charges of supporting the banned Kach movement – argued that Eliyahu’s visible Kach tattoo would harm the party’s public image, political sources familiar with the decision told Israeli outlet Srugim. A source told Srugim at the time that Eliyahu represented an older, unapologetic strain of Otzma Yehudit’s ideology, describing him as “that kind of Kahanist.”
Current polling, however, points to a strong performance for Otzma Yehudit, with projections showing the party winning between eight and 10 Knesset seats. If the polls hold, Eliyahu’s eighth place slot on the list will guarantee him a parliamentary seat. After the party formally submitted its full candidate list to Israel’s Central Elections Committee earlier this week, Ben Gvir publicly praised the slate, claiming he was “proud that we have the most diverse list in Israel.” Ben Gvir added that all Otzma Yehudit members carry “a lot of love for the people of Israel in our hearts.”
Beyond Eliyahu’s Kahanist ties, he has a long record of controversial and extremist actions. He has publicly expressed support for Elor Azaria, a former Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for the 2016 extrajudicial killing of an unarmed, wounded Palestinian man lying incapacitated on the ground in Hebron. In a social media post, Eliyahu called Azaria “the child of us all,” and claimed the soldier was right to “eliminate a terrorist at the scene.”
Eliyahu has also been repeatedly linked to violent clashes with anti-government protesters during Israel’s 2023 mass demonstrations against the Netanyahu government’s controversial judicial overhaul plan, with multiple reports documenting him personally attacking demonstrators. He has also targeted Palestinian journalists: he called for a confrontation with Palestinian Haaretz reporter Hanin Majadli at her home after she expressed support for an Israeli teacher fired for criticizing the Israeli military, writing, “Haaretz won’t fire her, but let’s make sure the police pay her a visit at home.”
Just months ago, in June 2024, Eliyahu joined other far-right activists to raise Israeli flags at the entrance to Kafr Kanna, a Palestinian-majority town in northern Israel. On social media platform Facebook, he spelled out his core political goal: “Our top mission as a government and as a people is to Judaise the Galilee and ensure the Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.”
Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit has already placed the so-called “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip at the top of its election platform, a term widely recognized as a euphemism for forced displacement and mass expulsion of Palestinian people from their land.