© Menahem Kahana / AFPOren Hazan
In Israel's competitive election campaigns, which have included ads of the government's left opposition surrendering to ISIS, several prominent politicians giving the audience the middle-finger and an outlandish mock-commercial for 'Fascism-scented' perfume, candidates hoping to capture the voters' attention have to really go all out.
If anyone is up to the challenge, it's Oren Hazan of PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, whose over-the-top rhetoric and antics have earned him the public's attention, for better or worse, on several occasions... usually for the worse.
Nonetheless, he has perhaps outdone even himself this time, releasing a campaign ad with his head superimposed over Eli Wallach's in a famous scene from the classic American Western film The Good the Bad and The Ugly. In the scene, Wallach's character guns down a would-be assailant from inside a bathtub, in Hazan's version the murdered man's head has been swapped with Zahalka's.
The video was met with a torrent of negative feedback calling him a "degenerate" and mocking his election chances.
Zahalka himself, on the other hand, took the bizarre threat a bit more seriously, and has reportedly filed a complaint with the police.
Zahalka is the leader of the Arab-majority Balad party which advocates for Arab rights and improved democratic freedoms in Israel - something that Hazan definitely doesn't approve-of, given his history of offensive remarks against Palestinians. The Jewish politician has become "famous" for berating a grieving Arab mother trying to visit her incarcerated son, for threatening to execute an entire Palestinian family for their relative's alleged crime and for expressing his desire to kick teenage resistance icon Ahed Tamimi in the face.
Comment: Oren Hazan is a despicable pathological bully who is thriving as a part of Netanyahu's Likud party - and a symptomatic part of the problem among so many Israelis that would seek to dehumanize, and ultimately destroy, the neighboring Palestinian and Arab populations (or anyone who would stand iin the way of a 'greater Israel.')