Atty. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, chair of Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center, tells Israel National News why she felt compelled to switch directions from legal activism against terror to entering politics.
In her role with Shurat HaDin, Darshan-Leitner worked tirelessly against terror in many unique ways using the judicial system through the banks, but now she is a soon-to-be politician as part of the Jewish Home party.
“Indeed I succeeded in my operation Shurat HaDin. We were able to seize hundreds of millions of dollars and to fight the banks and to change the international banking system so that no bank agrees to open bank accounts to a designated organization or to act in terror zones,” Darshan-Leitner says. “We fought on behalf of the IDF soldiers in the International Criminal Court before BDS and delegitimization. However, we reached a stage that the obstacle to continue with these operations lies in the hands of the court in Israel and the Israeli government.”
She explains that “rulings that I received in my cases are shameful for the fight against terrorism, they are standing on the equivalent rulings in the United States – this is not how you fight terrorism. When I file a lawsuit against the Human Rights Commission of the UN for publishing a blacklist of companies that are operating in today in Samaria in order to boycott them, the Attorney General of Israel comes and grants them immunity – this is not how you fight on behalf of Israel. So this is why I decided to take my operation to the next stage and fight on behalf of Israel from the Knesset, from the government.”
How does she relate to the statements of Ayelet Shaked that she is asking the right for forgiveness and that she is returning to the right?
“I also cared about the remorse of the of the people by saying that there were mistakes done and she was asking forgiveness. And I think that in the end of the day Ayelet was in the right and remains in the right,” she says. “I had a lot of conversations with Ayelet Shaked and I investigated the whole concept and I came to the conclusion that she is sincerely in the right and there is time to forgive her or time to move on. Jewish Home needs Ayelet Shaked in order to rise, in order to pass the threshold, and the entire right wing block needs Jewish Home in order to form a right-wing government.”
She comments that if the goal of the elections is to create a right-wing government, then Jewish Home needs to pass the threshold to make sure it will be a stable government of more than 61 seats that will be able to exist for four years.
She adds that while it is true that this time around, a lot of people especially in the National Religious community are undecided, she is hearing a lot of positive feedback from voters unsure of who to support.
“A lot of people have said to me that they didn't know who to vote for until they saw that I'm running – not for myself but that there is finally a party that they can identify with. The options are not good options for this public,” Darshan-Leitner says.
“We have the Religious Zionist Party on one hand which people don't want to vote for, perhaps [due to] extremism. We have Likud that people don't want to vote for. Likud became a one-man show and people don't agree. People want to see a party, people want to see a group, people want to have an agenda, and the style I believe that took over the Likud party is not the style of most of the religious-Zionist public. Therefore, you can hear it that we can't vote Likud, we can’t vote Smotrich, and I'm afraid that these people don't have a choice but to vote Gantz, and Gantz [is] left and we are losing these votes just because Blue and White has religious people there, so people feel that maybe this is an option, but they have to remember that this is a leftist party and this is why we need to give them this option of continuing on with the majority party.”