Otzma Yehudit party candidate Baruch Marzel, number four on the joint list with Yachad – Ha’am Itanu, responded on Monday to the broadside earlier in the day from Jewish Home candidate Rabbi Avichai Ronski, who sought to refute impressions that Ha’am Itanu caters to more religiously devout Jews by criticizing the party.

Marzel called on Jewish Home to show responsibility and refrain from such criticism against Ha’am Itanu so as not to damage the chances of forming a right-wing coalition in the looming elections.

“The attacks by Jewish Home members are damaging, and are liable to endanger and bring to the formation of a leftist government headed by Buji (Yitzhak) Herzog,” said Marzel.

“I have more than a little criticism against Jewish Home, I have more than a few serious things to say about Rabbi Ronski, Ayelet Shaked, and the chumminess with (Yair) Lapid (in the last elections – ed.), the release of terrorists, the enlistment law and the like that were the portion of the last term,” the nationalist activist from Hevron added.

“But despite that, we are showing national responsibility and enlisting to bring votes from Yesh Atid, (Moshe) Kahlon, Shas and (Avigdor) Liberman, and are not shooting inside the APC (armored personnel carrier),” Marzel remarked.

Marzel also responded directly to comments by Ronski, in which he said the choice in elections would either be between giving Jewish Home 12 seats or Ha’am Itanu five mandates, making it a choice between MK Orit Struk or a “Shas activist,” belittling candidate Sason Treblesi, a representative of party chairman Eli Yishai’s rabbinical counsel Rabbi Meir Mazuz.

“The attacks are very dangerous, we also can say that the equation is me or Dr. Anat Roth, a former Peace Now activist (who is 14th on the Jewish Home list – ed.), but I don’t think that’s correct in a time of emergency like this,” noted Marzel.

The Otzma Yehudit candidate added that under the current circumstances in which Labor and Hatnua are running neck-and-neck with Likud and threaten to form a leftist coalition, “we need to add strength and not deal with internal battles.”