Supreme Court begins deliberations on banning extremist party from elections

A nine-member panel of Supreme Court justices is hearing a petition to ban the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party from running in next month's elections for the Knesset.

The petition jointly filed by the Blue and White, Labor and the Democratic Union argues that the Central Election Committee, which recently permitted the three individual Otzma Yehudit candidates to run, failed to consider dozens of "serious racist statements" by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Baruch Marzel and Bentzi Gopstein.