The head of the Bayit Yehudi, Naftali Bennett, defended the #14 man on the party's Knesset list, Jeremy Gimpel, who came under attack as an extremist in TV's leftist Channel 2 at week's end.
"I am proud of Jeremy Gimpel and of my entire list," Bennett told Channel 2's Dana Weiss in a Saturday night interview.
The channel's Friday night newscast, a special weekly edition which sums up the week's events, featured an attack on Gimpel by ultra-leftist pundit Amnon Abramovich. Abramovich showed viewers a Youtube video of Gimpel speaking before a Christian group and raising the theoretical possibility that the Dome of the Rock would one day be blown up.
Abramovich explained that he is on a personal crusade intended to expose Bennett's Knesset list as being extremist.
"The lecture was given to a Christian group as I was teaching about the Book of Ezra, a story that happened over 2,000 years ago," Gimpel told Arutz Sheva Saturday night. "In order to make the story more lively I made a few jokes, and you clearly hear the audience laughing. This is a cheap political attack and I would urge anyone to watch the video in its entirety and decide for yourselves."
The Left, as well as Likud, have been attacking Bayit Yehudi furiously and venomously in the last two months. Judging by polls, the attacks have caused the list to rise in popularity rather than decline.