Controversial former IDF general Ofer Winter on Tuesday launched a new right-wing party called the “Amcha Yisrael,” or “People of Israel,” vowing to pursue a hawkish security policy while also working to engender unity across Israel’s diverse citizenry.
His announcement sparked immediate pushback from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned that the emergence of several small nationalist parties would split the vote and harm the entire camp.
Addressing a room packed with some 300 supporters in Jerusalem at the party launch, Winter, nevertheless, argued that in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, a new party was necessary because veteran politicians had brought disaster upon the country.
“Anyone who thinks, after October 7, that the public will accept everything remaining the same in the political sphere, without new people entering the system, is making a bitter mistake,” he said, promising to “do everything to establish as broad a right-wing government as possible, with as many Zionist partners as possible.”
Winter called the upcoming October 27 election a “referendum on whether we are capable of handling the real challenges of the State of Israel — integrating the Haredim [ultra-Orthodox] into the IDF, connecting Arabs who want the good of the country, bringing about a significant change in the justice system, and dismantling protection rackets and wild crime stretching from the Negev to the Galilee,” a reference to the wave of violent crime in Arab communities.
