Baruch Marzel

Marzel was born in Boston and moved to Israel with his parents when he was six weeks old, settling in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood. His father, Shlomo, was an educator. Marzel later gave up his American citizenship before an earlier Knesset bid.[1]

He studied at Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem and served in the Israeli army, where he was wounded during the First Lebanon War in 1982. A report about a documentary on him quoted Marzel discussing the killing of Lebanese prisoners after one threw a grenade at him, and his explanation: “It’s a war. They came to kill us; we have to kill them first.”[7]

Marzel joined Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League at age 13 and supported Kahane’s Kach party while still at school, distributing flyers and mailing leaflets in seventh grade. He later said, “I think Kahane was right. Every child in Israel knows that Kahane was right — everything he said happens.”[1] In a 2022 interview, Marzel said he had served as Kahane’s secretary in the Knesset and had been active in public affairs for 50 years; he described his own course as following a political “way” rather than simply engaging in politics.[8]

After Kahane was assassinated in 1990, Marzel became a leader of Kach. Accounts of the movement describe him as a former assistant to Kahane and say that a branch known as Ko’aḥ soon adopted the Kach name under his leadership. Marzel was based in Tel Rumeida in Hebron.[9][10] Another account says that some members retained the Kach name under Marzel’s impetus, while Kahane’s son Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane left to establish Kahane Hai. It also identifies a Kach militia, Ronen or the “Committee of Road Security,” as directed by Marzel and Tiran Polack.[10]

Kach had been barred from the Knesset in 1988 under legal provisions addressing racist platforms.[9][10] Kach and Kahane Chai were declared illegal in March 1994, following the Cave of Machpelah massacre in which Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshipers.[9][11] The Jewish Virtual Library says Kach welcomed the massacre.[9] Marzel was reported to have called Goldstein “one of the purest people in the world, a saint, a tzaddik.”[7]

A National Library of Israel archival description says Marzel was indicted in connection with the banning of Kach and Kahane Chai. The reported allegations were that he threw bottles at Arabs outside Beit Hadassah in Hebron and blocked an Arab vehicle near the Cave of the Machpela; the description also records an administrative detention order issued against him after the Hebron massacre. These are reported allegations, not findings of guilt.[11] The archival record’s metadata gives a 1992 creation date and dates its photograph to April 7, 1992, even though its descriptive text covers events in 1994.[11]

Kach continued underground after the ban, with activists including Marzel taking part in demonstrations and clashes with police.[9] A separate reference account identifies the militia under his direction, but the available material does not establish further details about its activities.[10]

Marzel was a candidate in the 2003 Knesset election. Globes identifies him as number two on Michael Kleiner’s Herut list, while another account describes him as second on a new far-right list without naming it.[4][12] The Supreme Court permitted him to run, rejecting the challenge to his candidacy; the initial report said the Court had not yet published its reasoning.[4] A Law Library of Congress report describes electoral disqualification as an extreme measure and says the Court required “clear, convincing, and unequivocal” evidence, presenting this as a general standard rather than a Marzel-specific explanation.[13] He did not win a seat: Herut received 36,202 votes, or 1.1%, below the then-required 1.5% threshold.[14]

In 2004, Marzel and other Kach members announced a party called Hil, an acronym for Jewish National Front. An account of the party says its aims included preventing the removal of Jewish settlements and transferring two million Arabs “over the Jordan River.”[10] Marzel later founded the Jewish National Front ahead of the 2006 election, after leaving Herut, and ran alongside Michael Ben-Ari. The party received fewer than 25,000 votes and won no Knesset seats.[2][15] Ynet described the campaign as provocative and reported that Marzel called for Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres to be opposed “at the ballot box.”[16]

In 2008, the grouping was relaunched as Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (“Our Land of Israel”) after Marzel allied with Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpo. It joined the National Union list for the 2009 election; Michael Ben-Ari, representing the grouping, was placed fourth, and the National Union won four seats.[16] After the National Union later broke up, Jewish National Front members established Otzma LeYisrael with Knesset member Aryeh Eldad. The party’s 2013 campaign used the slogan “There are no rights without duties” and displayed the word “Loyalty” in Arabic, but it fell short of the electoral threshold.[2]

Ahead of the 2015 election, Otzma LeYisrael became Otzma Yehudit and joined Eli Yishai’s Yachad party. Marzel was fourth on the joint list and represented the Otzma Yehudit faction. The Central Elections Committee barred him by a 17–16 vote amid allegations of anti-Arab racism, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision and allowed him to run.[5][17] Yachad received more than 125,000 votes but did not enter the Knesset.[2] A 2015 election listing also places Marzel fourth on the list, though the source does not provide a separate result for Otzma Yehudit in its results table.[18]

In September 2019, Marzel was second on the Otzma Yehudit slate. The Supreme Court disqualified him from the election for the 22nd Knesset under the Basic Law: The Knesset provision against incitement to racism.[6][19] The court accepted an appeal against the Elections Committee’s approval of his candidacy, while upholding the candidacy of Otzma Yehudit’s leader and the slate as a whole. It gave little weight to Marzel’s qualifications and assurances about his remarks, noting that this was the third challenge to his candidacy and citing subsequent conduct.[6] Reporting on the decision cites statements attributed to him, including that he did not distinguish among Arabs and regarded them as enemies, and that Arabs should be expelled and should not be employed.[6] Otzma Yehudit received 83,609 votes, or 1.88%, below the 3.25% threshold.[19]

The Anti-Defamation League reported that Marzel and fellow Otzma Yehudit member Benzi Gopstein were barred from running in September 2019, and that the party was running independently and could potentially join a right-wing governing coalition.[20] In a 2022 interview, Marzel said he and Michael Ben-Ari had founded Otzma Yehudit for ideological rather than merely electoral purposes. He said the movement’s institutions had closed and criticized what he saw as ideological flexibility among its political leaders.[8]

The organizations with which Marzel was involved formed a documented political sequence from the Jewish National Front through Eretz Yisrael Shelanu and Otzma LeYisrael to Otzma Yehudit. Although Marzel never entered the Knesset, Michael Ben-Ari entered it through the National Union alliance in 2009, and the later organizations continued to contest national elections.[2][16]

Marzel has participated in nationalist marches through Arab towns, demonstrated against Jewish-Arab intermarriage and Nakba Day events, and organized celebrations of Baruch Goldstein’s actions, according to a profile of him. In that profile, he said he would encourage Arab emigration if the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza were annexed, adding that “There are ways” to ensure many of Israel’s “enemies” would not remain.[1]

A Spring 2014 commentary placed “Rabbi Baruch Marzel” among ultra-nationalist Orthodox Zionists, using the term “chardalim.” In discussing criticism of Ariel Sharon as his body lay in state at the Knesset, the author reported that Marzel wrote that Sharon “will be inscribed for eternal damnation in the Book of Traitors to the Jewish people.”[21]

A 2016 report described Marzel as a resident of Hebron with nine children and 23 grandchildren. It covered the documentary The Radical Jew, which followed his family life and political activity there; Marzel said, “There is no cure better than the grandchild.”[7]

Accounts report that Marzel was first arrested at 14 and first convicted three years later; a newspaper report cited in a later profile said he had accumulated 40 police complaints before turning 30.[1] Ynet reports convictions for obstructing a police officer during an outpost evacuation in the 1980s and assaulting a police officer during clashes at Havat Gilad in 2003; the latter resulted in community service. It also reports that, under a plea agreement involving reduced charges, Marzel was convicted in 2023 of participating in a fight and shoving a left-wing activist in Hebron, receiving a suspended sentence.[3]

His election cases produced differing outcomes. The Supreme Court permitted him to run in 2003[4] and overturned the Central Elections Committee’s 2015 decision barring him,[5] but disqualified him in 2019 on the basis of incitement to racism.[6] In 2015, Marzel called the committee’s decision “gagging by the left-wing.”[17] The distinction between allegations, convictions, and judicial findings is important: the archival description of the 1994-related indictment reports allegations, while the later Ynet account describes specific convictions and sentences.[11][3]

The ADL describes Otzma Yehudit’s leaders as self-identified disciples of Kahane and characterizes Kahane’s political outlook as promoting anti-Arab racism, violence, and political extremism. That is the ADL’s assessment of the party’s leadership and Kahane; the cited account does not establish Marzel’s personal views or specify his individual relationship to Kahane.[22] Separately, Ynet reported that Britain sanctioned Marzel along with four other Israelis it described as “extremist settlers,” amid moves by Britain and 11 other countries toward restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.[3]