(IsraelNN.com) The National Union -- Moledet Knesset list will be headed by
Yaakov (Ketzaleh) Katz, the Executive Director of Beit El Yeshiva Center Institutions and Arutz-Sheva/Israel National News.
MK Uri Ariel will be in second place, MK Aryeh Eldad in third place and Dr. Michael Ben Ari will be fourth. Moledet Chairman Uri Bank will be in fifth place and Alon Davidi of Sderot will be in sixth place.
Baruch Marzel and Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe have agreed to back the list and will not be running independently. Their consent was given after the National Union placed Michael Ben Ari in the fourth slot.
Unequalled tenacity
Ketzaleh is a legendary figure among the national-religious public, especially among residents of Judea and Samaria. During the heyday of Jewish (re-)settlement in Samaria, in the late 1970s and 1980's, Ketzaleh emerged as one of the settlement movement's top visionaries and leaders. He is a co-founder of the community of Beit El and, together with Rabbi Zalman Melamed, founded the prominent Beit El network of educational institutions.
Ketzaleh served in the elite Shaqed commando unit in the Yom Kippur War and was badly injured when the unit held off vastly superior Egyptian commando forces at the beginning of the fighting. He was taken for dead by fellow soldiers but at the personal insistence of his commander, Maj.-Gen. Ariel Sharon, he was flown to a hospital and regained consciousness. He spent the next year recovering in the hospital, where he also met his future wife Tami, who was volunteering there.
The blessing of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook
During that year he decided to re-establish the community of Beit El in Samaria, after almost 2,000 years since the community was destroyed. He received the blessing of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook of Blessed Memory for the project.
Shortly after outbreak of the Arab 'Intifada' in 1987, Ketzaleh founded Arutz Sheva/Israel National Radio – which quickly became Israel's third largest radio station. The station celebrates Zionist values and plays exclusively Israeli and Jewish music. In 1995 the station's website became the first 24 hour broadcast from Israel on the Internet
From 1990 to 1992, when Ariel Sharon was Housing Minister in the Shamir government, he appointed Ketzaleh to be his top advisor. Ketzaleh initiated countless building startups throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and broke the record for the number of building contracts signed in a single year of Israel's history.
He publicly broke ranks with Sharon after Sharon was elected Prime Minister and began following a political line that contradicted all that he previously stood for.
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