Despite Yachad-Ha'am Itanu failing to pass the Knesset threshold, for Otzma Yehudit candidate Baruch Marzel, running together on a technical joint bloc list was still the right to do.
"It's a mixed feeling," he said during an interview with Arutz Sheva. "On the one hand, we did the right thing, we brought in more power, and we tried hard to pass the threshold. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that we failed."
Still, Marzel noted, success doesn't necessarily mean positive action. "Look at what [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu did during his last two weeks in power, terrible things, hurting the national religious public and communities, the destruction of outposts - it hurts."
Marzel, Eli Yishai, and Yoni Chetboun met this week and discussed the possibilities of filing an appeal against the elections due to to fraud, but Marzel admitted he was pessimistic.
"Unfortunately, we're still trying very hard to replace the International Investigations Unit and the Israel Place and put in place a body that will investigate the thousands of fake votes. There was criminal counterfeiting here, especially Aryeh Deri's people who hurt us a lot."
"I'm definitely not optimistic, even though I know if we did this to a party like Meretz, I guess they would establish a commission of inquiry and order new elections. But Joubran and the other judges can't afford to take a mandate from Yesh Atid and Labor and put Baruch Marzel in the Knesset, so I'm very pessimistic."
Marzel blamed Yachad's failure to pass on Netanyahu and the intense vitriol against him coming from the Left. "There is no doubt that Netanyahu took two mandates from us, the left's mobilization of unprecedented hated against Netanyahu made people identify with him."
"We would have passed the previous threshold percentage, but this time we needed ten thousand more votes," Marzel noted, before himself attacking Netanyahu. "It's a shame they voted for a man whose word is not his word."
"During his last team, everything was frozen, a millimeter didn't move in Hevron, there is a freeze in Jerusalem, and now they're building apartments for Arabs there. He promised us the Cave of the Patriarchs, he said, but we haven't received anything from Netanyahu."
Marzel then moved his ire to Yisrael Beytenu Avigdor Liberman, accusing him of never taking real action and only talking big, such as with calling for the death penalty for terrorists.
"Liberman has been a senior minister for many years...and it's all talk. Can anyone tell me one thing he did against Arabs, real action, I don't understand something like this."
"I promise the death penalty for terrorists won't pass, even if Liberman makes appearances. Bibi won't let it pass, just as Bibi doesn't let any good law pass. All of it is election propaganda," Marzel charged.
"I can also submit a bill, like Sharon Gal did, but not from me and not from him will any law pass. You see how he wanted to block the Arab parties by raising the Knesset threshold. In the end he made them 30-40% stronger than they were in the past."