(JTA) — A far-right Jewish activist and one-time Knesset candidate attacked the Israeli defense minister’s car in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Baruch Marzel, calling defense chief Moshe Yaalon an “enemy of the settlements” who was “strong against Jews and weak against Arabs,” jumped on Yaalon’s car while Yaalon was visiting the Tomb of the Patriarchs on Tuesday, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Yaalon was not injured and Marzel was not arrested, although security forces forcibly escorted him from the scene.
Marzel headed the outlawed Kach movement after the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose grandson was one of three suspected Jewish terrorists placed in administrative detention without charges last week in the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank. Marzel, a Boston native who lives in a Jewish settlement in Hebron, was on the Yachad party’s slate in Israel’s March 17 elections, but the far-right party did not win any seats in the Knesset.
In February, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a government committee’s decision to disqualify Marzel, along with Arab-Israeli lawmaker Hanin Zoabi, from running in the elections, but declined to give a reason.
