Benjamin Netanyahu and Mansour Abbas
Benjamin Netanyahu and Mansour AbbasImage: Tomer Neuberg & Avshalom Sassoni / Flash90

The "Choosing Life Forum – Bereaved Families Association" on Wednesday sent an unprecedentedly harsh letter to the leaders of the right-wing bloc.

The letter focuses on the news that leaders of the bloc apparently intend to be absent or refrain from voting in the Knesset election committee session regarding disqualification of the Ra’am list, preventing it from running for the Knesset in the November elections. The vote will follow the submission of the petition by the Forum based on a comprehensive study on the subject. The Forum recently published its results.

The letter is addressed to Knesset members Benjamin Netanyahu, Yariv Levin, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, Avi Maoz, Moshe Gafni as well as to the heads of Torah Judaism and Shas Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf and Aryeh Deri. The Forum is concerned about the bloc leaders’ "puzzling and dangerous decision".

According to the families who signed the letter, they received "the puzzling and dangerous news in complete and utter surprise."

The families remind them that "the reasoned and detailed petition submitted by the Forum to disqualify Ra’am is based on in-depth and thorough research conducted for over a year by the Forum's research department. It includes dozens of items proving that the Ra’am party supports terrorism."

The signatories claim that Ra'am’s support for terrorism as shown in the research report and the petition stands out "not only at the ideological level as serving the political arm of the Islamic movement; not only at the declarative level, because of dozens of statements against the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state - but first and foremost at the operative level since organizations closely related to it transfer funds directly to Hamas and the families of terrorists."

According to the Forum, "Out of narrow political considerations, and in complete contrast to the ideology in whose name you supposedly hope to form a government in the next Knesset, it seems that you are choosing to act in a way that most likely means giving a terror-supporting list the right to run in the Knesset elections."

At the end of the letter, the bereaved families pledge: "We are not prepared to tolerate a situation in which the 'right-wing parties are ready to sit in the Knesset plenary together with those who support those who murdered our loved ones, and whose hands are covered in blood."

The signatories of the letter, therefore, pledge that "from now until election day, we will not be silent until the mountains of evidence that were included in our research and point clearly to the fact that Ra’am is a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' reach the general public and become common knowledge."

The bereaved families who signed the letter also state that "We will do everything in our power so that the public understands that the Zionist parties are legitimizing the participation of a party that clearly supports terrorism - including parties that rhetorically call Ra’am a terrorist supporter, but in practice, help it run in the elections."