Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Gilad Erdan, MK Tali Gottlieb, and the Otzma Yehudit party sharply attacked Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas on Wednesday following Amit Segal’s exposure of statements he made in Arabic. According to the report they responded to, Abbas addressed recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state and claimed he needed to conduct himself in a way that would prevent his party from being disqualified from running for the Knesset. Following the remarks, Otzma Yehudit announced it intends to file a demand to disqualify Abbas from the elections, while Smotrich called him “a dangerous enemy—a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
3+Smotrich claimed the statements reinforce warnings he has been sounding for years against Abbas. According to him, the Ra’am chairman is hiding his true intentions and presenting a different position to the Israeli public: “For years I’ve been warning about Mansour Abbas’s ‘taqiyya’ (concealment) method,” Smotrich said. “This is a foundational layer in the Muslim Brotherhood movement’s system: hide the real goal, accumulate power, and use it for the real purpose—jihad and elimination of ‘infidels’ with emphasis on Jews and the State of Israel.”
Smotrich added: “Mansour Abbas is a dangerous enemy—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The fact that Eisenkot and the left are still working to form a government with him is a dangerous eclipse of reason.” He went on to reference his past opposition to cooperation with Ra’am: “I’m proud of my stand against forming a government with him, when even in the national camp there were those who got confused and were captivated by his honeyed words, as well as leading a determined opposition that brought down the left’s Muslim Brotherhood government.” He concluded by declaring: “I commit to doing everything so that the State of Israel will never be sold to its enemies or be dependent on them.”
3+Unity party chairman Gilad Erdan also attacked Abbas following the exposure of the Arabic statements and pointed out the gap between the messages he presents to the public and his actual positions. “Abbas is pulling the wool over the Elections Committee’s eyes, pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, and there are those who fall into his trap,” Erdan said. According to him, “He doesn’t want a Jewish state here; he wants an Islamic caliphate. Only a broad unity government will ensure a Zionist government, without Abbas and without pulling the wool over our eyes.”
MK Tali Gottlieb joined the attack and claimed the published statements show Abbas only recognized a Jewish state to prevent his disqualification from the Knesset. “Mansour Abbas is literally troubling Israel, said today in Arabic that he was forced to recognize a Jewish state only to not be disqualified from the Knesset! Get it?? An enemy of the Jewish state in Israel’s Knesset,” Gottlieb wrote. She added: “As befits a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood terror organization, he will sanctify any lie in order to take over the Knesset, the state, and ultimately impose Sharia law. This is Abbas’s dangerous vision that undermines our existence. We must not allow such a party to run for Knesset. We must not!”
3+Alongside the political attack, Otzma Yehudit announced a practical step following the publication: the party intends to file a demand to disqualify Abbas from running for Knesset. “Bennett and Eisenkot’s senior partner for government admits he doesn’t recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state,” the party said. Otzma Yehudit added: “I would tell you his statements are delusional, but I’m not surprised. He’s from the Muslim Brotherhood. The delusion is that Eisenkot and Bennett dream every night about how they’ll form a government with him.”
The party went on to criticize the possibility that Bennett and Eisenkot would cooperate with Abbas in forming a future government: “Eisenkot and Bennett will let Mansour take over the Ministry of National Security. They’ll let him stop home demolitions in the Negev, stop enforcement of muezzin noise, close the protection and polygamy units that Minister Ben-Gvir established, and turn the Galilee and Negev into Hamastan.” The statement concluded: “This is the goal of Abbas and his friends, Bennett and Eisenkot. Following what he published this morning, we will file a demand to disqualify Mansour Abbas from running for Knesset.”
3+The current publication touches on one of the issues that have accompanied Abbas and Ra’am in recent years—the attitude toward Israel’s definition as a Jewish state and the meaning of his declarations on the subject. According to the report on which the political responses are based, Abbas addressed in his Arabic remarks the need to conduct himself in a way that wouldn’t lead to Ra’am’s disqualification from running for Knesset. His political rivals interpret this as an admission that the messages he presented in the past regarding the Jewish state stemmed from the need to ensure his party’s ability to continue competing in elections.
Ra’am is identified with the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by Mansour Abbas. In recent years, Abbas has led a line seeking to increase the party’s integration into national politics and influence decision-making from within the political system. The move reached a peak after the 2021 elections, when Ra’am joined the coalition formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. Since then, the question of cooperation with Abbas has become one of the prominent points of dispute between the political camps.