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| By israelinsider staff November 15, 2004 |
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Moshe Feiglin, head of the influential Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction of the Likud Party, announced his candidacy for the Likud chairmanship at the movement's second annual conference. While Feiglin has run for the post before, what is new this time, a key movement leader said, is that he has a realistic chance and intention to win.
Addressing 2,000 members of the movement he founded at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, Feiglin declared: "We already know the last reel of the disengagement movie. No one can overcome God's will to keep us in Gaza."
Israeli Channel One focused on the toast Feiglin led in celebration of Yasser Arafat's death. Feiglin told the crowd that Admitting that, to "maintain his sanity" over the past four years, he had a sticker on his car that said "Kill Arafat Now." Together with the movement's members and several Likud Knesset Members in attendance, Feiglin raised a cup to the terror leader's demise.
"Someone died in the Mukata and an entire nation is going crazy," Feiglin said. "As an act of sanity, so we will know we are not crazy, we raise a glass praying for the death of all of God's enemies."
The movement, established nine years ago, numbers about 10,000 Likud members and is represented by more than 130 Likud central committee members out of a total of 3,000. Nevertheless less, their ideological passion, strong organization, and hard work is credited as a key factor in the defeat of the "disengagement" referendum by Likud voters. The movement has also successfully applied pressure to influence Members of Knesset in key committee and plenum votes.
Feiglin was prevented by the courts from running for a Knesset seat because of his conviction for "sedition" as a result of his activities with the anti-Oslo protest movement, Zo Artzeinu.
Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit have already set up a campaign headquarters and plan to go door to door to Likud members. They have produced a monthly publication called "Metzudah" [Fortress]. Michael Puah, one of the movement's leader, said that the goal was to create personal connections with the voters. He said hundreds of activists are already at work in the field. He estimate that elections would be help between six and eighteen months from now.
Head of the "Likud rebels," MK and recently fired former minister Uzi Landau, was greeted by a standing ovation. He said that while he did with all of the Jewish Leadership movement's tenets, he identified with its spirit and significance. "I am here to bind myself with this important event," said Landau. "I don't agree with all of your messages, but there is room for them, but there is a place for there ideas. You are succeeding in awakening the ideological debate.
Feiglin, in his speech, read to the crowd a letter he had sent recently to US President Bush in which he predicted that: "Most probably while you are still in office, I will be elected prime minister of Israel."
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