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Moshe Feiglin was born in 1962 and is currently the head of the Zehut party, which he founded together with other members in the summer of 2015. Mr. Feiglin formerly served as a Knesset member in the Likud party and as Deputy Speaker of the 19th Knesset. He was the head of the “Zu Artzeinu” movement (1994), established to halt the Oslo Accords, and then headed the Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud. Moshe is happily married to his wife Tzippy, and is the father of five children and nine grandchildren.
The Feiglin family’s roots are deep in the Land of Israel. In 1889, Feiglin’s ancestors arrived in Israel in order to fulfill the mitzvah of settling the land in its simplest form – through construction and agriculture. The family members were among the founders of the first moshavot in the north – Mishmar HaYarden, Hadera, Kinneret and more. Moshe’s grandfather, Avraham Feiglin, was the first child born in the settlement of Metula, and his father, Yaakov Tzvi, served in the Hebrew Settlements Police and was one of the pioneers of the textile industry in Israel.
Moshe was born in Haifa, and grew up in a family with representatives from almost all streams in Israel – religious, secular, ultra-Orthodox, leftist, right-wing and everything in between. He attended the “Tachkemoni” school in Rehovot and later the “Or Etzion” High School. Feiglin served in the IDF as an officer in combat engineering, and was discharged with the rank of captain, after which he established the first company in Israel to service the external maintenance of tall buildings and a hi-tech company, as well . When the Oslo Accords fell upon Israel, Feiglin transferred ownership of the hi-tech company to a friend, in order to free his time for activism in the Zo Artzeinu movement that he had founded.
The ‘Zo Artzeinu/This is our Land‘ Movement
With an unprecedented, nonviolent demonstration of about 100,000 people against the Oslo Accords, Feiglin succeeded in breaching the walls of imposed silence and sounding the public alarm on the dangers of the Oslo Accords. The signing of the agreements, despite the clear opposition of most of the Israeli public, led Feiglin to the realization that the only way to restore power to the people would be by entering politics.
In the Likud
In 2000, Moshe Feiglin joined the Likud and established the “Jewish Leadership Faction of the Likud.” Feiglin ran four times for the leadership of the Likud and the premiership.
On November 26, 2012, in the primaries ahead of the Nineteenth Knesset, he was as number 15 on the Likud roster and subsequently entered the Knesset.
Feiglin was appointed Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and served as a member of nine committees: the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Interior and Environment Committee, the House Committee, the Economics Committee, the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, the Public Complaints Committee, the Subcommittee on the Control of Traffic Accidents, the State Control Committee and the Science and Technology Committee.
In addition, he served as Chairman of the Israel-Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group (together with MK Nachman Shai). He also founded and served as chairman of three lobbies: the Lobby for Raising Awareness of Parkinson’s Disease, the Lobby for the Professional Army and the Liberal Lobby.
Resignation from the Likud
In the Likud primaries in December 2014, Feiglin decided not to run for leadership of the Likud in order not to hurt his chances of entering the Likud Knesset roster. Many elements within the Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joined together in order to undermine Feiglin’s chances of becoming a realistic candidate on the roster. He was elected 17th on the national list, which effectively placed him at the 36th spot on the roster – from which he would clearly not enter the Knesset. Feiglin announced that the Likud has ended its role as a tool for creating faith-based leadership for Israel and that a new tool must be created to realize the goal.
The Zehut Party
In March 2015, Feiglin announced the establishment of the “Zehut – the Israeli Jewish Movement” party. The goals of the party are a Jewish state that maximizes freedom for the citizen, fortifies the values of family and community, maintains a free economy, realizes its sovereignty over all parts of the Land of Israel under its control – first among them, the Temple Mount – and endeavors to end the state of war and bloodshed by means of defeating the enemy.
For more on Zehut, click here.