Israeli Election Bus Ads Read 'Occupation. Expulsion. Settlement.' — Candidate Feiglin Defends Slogan

Public buses in Israel are now carrying campaign ads for Moshe Feiglin that read: "Occupation. Expulsion. Settlement."

Feiglin, chairman of the Zehut party and a former Knesset member, defended the slogan on Instagram after it drew criticism.

"We will not delete a single comma. Take a very good look at these signs, because they are not going anywhere," he wrote. "You read it perfectly correctly, letter by letter: Occupation. Expulsion. Settlement."

He said his party intends to "settle" every part of what he calls the Land of Israel.

The ad campaign comes as Feiglin runs for parliament ahead of Israel's October 27 elections, under an electoral merger he signed last month with far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich. The alliance is projected to win five to six Knesset seats, which could return Feiglin to office a decade after he last served, from 2013 to 2015, as a Likud lawmaker before founding Zehut in 2015.

'The baby that will be born in Gaza tomorrow'

Earlier this week, Feiglin told the Jerusalem Post he wants "to see Gaza empty."

"Occupation, transfer all, all the Arabs. I don't care. They cannot stay there after what they did," he said.

He told the paper the entire population of Gaza, not just Hamas, constitutes the enemy, including children.

"The baby that will be born in Gaza tomorrow will do exactly the same, God forbid, to your baby that will be born tomorrow in Jerusalem," he said. "There's no other way. That's the reason they live for. That's what they learn with their mother's milk."

The statement is consistent with remarks Feiglin has made repeatedly over the past three years. Last year, on Israel's Channel 14, he said "every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy" and called for occupying and settling Gaza so that "not a single Gazan child" remains. In 2024 he invoked Adolf Hitler while calling for Palestinian expulsion, describing Gazans as "Islamo-Nazis" and arguing, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza." In an October 2023 interview with Al Jazeera, he called for the "complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it ... Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon."

Feiglin has also long advocated building a Third Temple on the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque and annexing the occupied West Bank along with Gaza.

The campaign slogan, displayed on public transit ahead of a national election, places a candidate's calls for mass expulsion of Palestinians on the ballot rather than only in interview transcripts.