A bizarre incident unfolded Tuesday evening at the Central Elections Committee as parties submitted their candidate lists ahead of the Knesset elections. A representative of the “Biblical Bloc” party presented the committee with the party’s four candidates.
1+But during the presentation, he mentioned—almost in passing—an unusual detail: one of the four candidates is no longer alive. The startling statement naturally drew attention, especially given that it came during the formal process of presenting the candidate list.
The “Biblical Bloc,” also known by its Hebrew acronym Gahat, is a fringe party founded in 2018 by Dennis (Avi) Lipkin. One of the party’s central ideas is creating political cooperation between Jews and Christians in Israel, based on belief in the Bible and support for the State of Israel and the Land of Israel.
1+Among the principles the party promotes are opposition to withdrawals from territories of the Land of Israel, fighting terror, strengthening Israeli advocacy worldwide, and deepening ties between Jews and Christians. Over the years, the party has also reached out to Christian communities in Israel and to immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish.
Despite running in several election cycles, the party has remained far from the electoral threshold. In the elections for the 24th Knesset, it received just 428 votes, and in the 25th Knesset elections in 2022, its support dropped to 411 votes. In those elections, the party ran under the letters “Yod-Kuf,” with founder Dennis Lipkin heading the list.
Now the party has returned to the Elections Committee in another attempt to compete for votes—but at least when it comes to presenting its list, it’s already provided one of the more unusual moments of the candidate submission process: four candidates were presented on behalf of the party, with one of them, according to its own representative, already deceased.