Ofer Winter: We burned opposition votes, not right-wing

Res. Brigadier General Ofer Winter, chairman of the Amcha Yisrael party, responded overnight Tuesday to exit-poll results for the 26th Knesset that placed his party below the electoral threshold on all television channels. In a statement to activists, Winter made clear he has no intention of withdrawing from the political arena.

"We came for the long haul, the journey has just begun," the party chairman said in his first response to the results. Winter addressed claims made during the campaign that his party was burning votes from the national camp, arguing the reality was different: "We burned votes from opposition parties, or from people who didn't want to vote at all."

The Amcha Yisrael chairman pointed an accusing finger at attacks directed against him from within the national camp during the campaign. "Without the ugly campaign against us, the likes of which we've never seen, we would now have a strong right-wing government," he declared. His words hinted that the focused pressure and attacks on his party affected the final result at the ballot box.

The response comes after heavy pressure was applied to Winter in recent days to withdraw from the race. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appealed to him repeatedly to pull out, fearing his party would not cross the threshold and would burn votes from the national camp.

Smotrich even offered Winter a ministerial position in the Defense Ministry from the Religious Zionism party's quota, alongside full authority to establish an administration for voluntary emigration from Gaza and an administration for haredi enlistment and integration, in exchange for withdrawing from the race. Netanyahu also published a sharp tweet calling on Winter to withdraw, claiming he "is not crossing the threshold in any of the polls."

But Winter rejected all the pressure. In a statement he published several days ago, he described the price he and his candidates paid: "From the moment we said we deserve more, the reservists, the young people, harassment began, private investigators, the whole works." He made clear that "we didn't come for a job, as you're used to. We came to change and to lead a path."

The prime minister's attempts to recruit senior rabbis to the withdrawal effort also failed. Netanyahu personally approached Rav Binyahu Shmueli, with whom Winter studies, in an attempt to enlist him in the effort, but the rav firmly refused to interfere in his student's political decision. Rav David Abuhatzeira of Nahariya also made clear he had no intention of acting against Winter, and even called him "part of the wave of hope in the right-wing camp."

Despite the disappointing results in the exit polls, Winter concluded that his movement would continue to operate in the political system going forward. This was his first response after the publication of television exit polls, in which the party does not cross the threshold.