The left-wing Democrats party kicked off its election campaign at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday with a pledge to keep criminal defendants out of office and a goal of controlling the education and justice ministries in the next government.

Activists also held an anti-government protest elsewhere in Tel Aviv, and far-left demonstrators protesting “apartheid” in the West Bank blocked a road, prompting police to arrest nine people.

The Rabin Square rally in front of the Tel Aviv city hall was attended by about 1,000 people, many of them in blue Democrats shirts. They chanted “Democracy” in the style of the past three years’ anti-government protests, and similarly chanted “Democrats.”

Party leader Yair Golan was introduced as “the leader whose feet are firm on the ground but whose eyes look out into the distance,” who formed the Democrats by merging Israel’s legacy left-leaning parties Labor and Meretz, as well as various protest groups, in a “historic union that will change the face of the country for generations to come.”

Golan said the party was “embarking on the most fateful battle ever for the future of the State of Israel.”

“From this night on we’re going out into the field and speaking with every single Israeli and bringing in one million votes,” he said, to applause. That figure would likely land the party almost 30 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, though polls typically show the party receiving about 10 seats in the October 27 election.

Speakers also railed against settler violence and called for dismantling settler outposts in the West Bank.

The Democrats were lambasted by figures to their left on Friday, after Golan and other top members described as Palestinian terrorism the deadly gunfight that took place between locals and settlers who illegally entered the Nablus-area Palestinian village of Tell. Two Israelis and four Palestinians were killed in the clash, which then sparked dozens of settler raids on villages across the West Bank, as well as a major IDF crackdown.

Referring to the West Bank shoot-out, Golan accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz of deliberately turning the West Bank “on the eve of the election into a violent arena that endangers human life.”

“Our soldiers’ blood that has been spilled, and that unfortunately is yet to be spilled, is on their hands,” Golan said, vowing to dismantle “[National Security Minister Itamar] Ben........

© The Times of Israel