Religious Zionist Party (הציונות הדתית)
Other names: National Union - Tkuma (תקומה)
Type: Jewish religious-political and militant organization in the United States
Founded: 1998
Affiliations: The Jewish Home/URWP/Yamina
Headquarters: New York City - Los Angeles - Toronto
Organisation Ideology: Right-wing Populism/Ultra-nationalism/Religious Zionism
Founders: Rabbi Hanan Porat and Zvi Hendel
Leadership: Bezalel Smotrich/Ofir Sofer (Secretary-General)
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Overview
“National Union - Tkuma” is an Orthodox Jewish, far-right political party in Israel established in 1998, when Hanan Porat and Zvi Hendel left the National Religious Party. The Religious Zionist Party contains a reincarnation of the Kahanist movement, a Jewish extreme group designated as a terrorist group decades ago by Israel, the U.S., and other Western countries for inciting violence against Arabs. Tkuma is known for its adherence to religious teachings, opposition to homosexuality in Israel, and opposition to any territorial compromises in the entire Holy Land. Although the official stance of the Jewish Home parliamentary bloc, of which it is a part of, favors only the annexation of Area C of the West Bank, while other members advocate the annexation of the entire West Bank.
In an article published by The Times of Israel, Bezalel Smotrich, the party's new leader and founder of Regavim, an extreme right-wing association that persecutes Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, chose to participate in the elections with the Yamina Party in 2019. Prior to the election in 2021, Smotrich renamed the party “Religious Zionism Party” and stated that it will run on its own, with the sole goal of “uniting religious Zionism, and primarily to be the ideological right-wing voice in the Knesset.” Owing to former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who arranged a merger between Smotrich's far-right party with the even more radical Otzma Yehudit and anti-LGBT Noam factions, Tukma was able to win six seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
Ties to Extremism
The National Union - Tkuma and its current Chairman, Smotrich, have a long history of anti-Palestinian activities, initiating bills to legalise Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands in the West Bank and vandalising Palestininan properties. Tkuma, together with Regavim, managed to increase the number of Jewish communities and settlements across the West Bank to 900.
In 2018, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization urged the government to open a criminal probe into Smotrich for using Twitter to encourage illegal Israeli settlers to commit violence and carry out attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. According to the Times of Israel, Smotrich tweeted: “I call on my heroic [settler] friends and pioneers to come out tonight and close Route 60 along its entire length to the movement of Arab vehicles. If there are terror attacks, there will be no Arabs on the roads. Our lives precede their quality of life.”
Not only has Smotrich used social media to promote the legalisation of Jewish outposts in the West Bank, he has also endorsed violence against Palestinians. In April 2018, shortly after Palestinian girl Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier who infringed upon her family's land, Smotrich said, in a suspended tweet that forced Twitter to temporarily shut down his account, that “Ahed should have gotten a bullet, at the very least in the kneecap,” in his opinion. “She would have been placed under home arrest for the remainder of her life if she had done so”, he added.