Far-rightist Itamar Ben-Gvir, a likely senior partner in Israel's next government, drew U.S. condemnation on Thursday for attending a memorial service for Meir Kahane, despite his having been booed at the event for disavowing the late militant leader's call for mass expulsion of Arabs.
A former member of Kahane's outlawed Kach movement, Ben-Gvir tweeted ahead of the Jerusalem event that his participation was in recognition of the slain U.S.-born Israeli rabbi's "love of Israel" and "fight for Soviet Jewry and against anti-Semitism."
Israeli TV aired his eulogy for Kahane, who was shot by an Egyptian-American militant in Manhattan 32 years ago this week.
"It's no secret that today I am not Rabbi Kahane, and don't support expulsion of all the Arabs and will not pass laws for separate beaches for Arabs and Jews," he said, drawing boos from members of the audience, several of whom wore Kach T-shirts.
But there were cheers when he repeated his election pledge to deport "terrorists" - a term he has applied to Palestinian stone-throwers, as well as to some representatives of Israel's 21% Arab minority.
Ben-Gvir, 46 and a practising lawyer, says he has moderated.
Asked about Ben-Gvir's presence at the memorial, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price, told reporters in Washington that "celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent.
"There is no other word for it – it is abhorrent. And we remain concerned, as we’ve said before, by the legacy of Kahane Chai and the continued use of rhetoric among violent right-wing extremists," Price said, adding that Washington has listed the group as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.
The United States has "condemned incitement... violence and racism in all of its forms," Price said, repeating a call for calm and restraint in Israel.
Having placed first in last week's election, conservative former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly need to ally with Ben-Gvir's Religious Zionism and other nationalist parties to achieve a stable parliamentary majority.
That has raised alarmin Israel and abroad, given Ben-Gvir's record which includes a 2007 conviction for racist incitement and support for terrorism, and anti-LGBT activism.
A settler living in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in a 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Ben-Gvir wants the Palestinian Authority, which has limited rule in parts of the territory under interim U.S.-sponsored peace deals, dismantled.
Ben-Gvir also supports Jewish prayer on a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that houses al-Aqsa mosque and which is a vestige of ancient Jewish temples.
Washington has publicly withheld comment on the possibility of Ben-Gvir's involvement in a ruling coalition, saying it respected Israeli democracy and awaited confirmation of the new government and word of its policies including on long-stalled Palestinian statehood talks and Iran's nuclear projects.
"We'll see who gets to be in these positions and what positions they take vis-a-vis their positions," U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told Israel's Kan radio when asked about Ben-Gvir during a Wednesday interview broadcast on Thursday.
"My job, as the American ambassador, is to keep dialogue going ... but to push back on things that we disagree with. And I will be pushing back aggressively on things we disagree with."
(Reporting by Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis and Henriette Chacar; Editing by Howard Goller)
