Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman was undoubtedly the biggest winner of the September elections. Within six months, his niche Yisrael Beitenu party almost doubled its support, from 173,000 votes in the April elections to over 310,000. According to an analysis by the financial newspaper Globes, many of the new voters were disappointed supporters of the young Blue and White party that ran for the first time in April. For example, Yisrael Beitenu surged in Tel Aviv from 1.4% of the vote in April to 4.4% in September, while Blue and White dropped from 46% to less than 43%. In the neighboring town of Givatayim, a Labor party bastion, Liberman’s party soared 452%. In the town of Ra’anana, its support grew 318%, in neighboring Hod Hasharon 285% and in nearby Herzliya the number of Yisrael Beitenu voters grew 195%.

What made comfortable citizens from the greater Tel Aviv area and nearby Sharon district wander from the centrist Blue and White party, the center-left Labor and even left-wing Meretz to a party whose former leaders were embroiled in criminal wrongdoing, and their replacements are obscure Liberman soldiers? Presumably, most of the new voters did not undergo an ideological conversion within a few short months from being law-abiding, peace-loving liberals to acolytes of a West Bank settler (Liberman lives in the Nokdim settlement) who excels at inciting to hatred of the Arab minority and maligning the legal system. They were likely aware of the stories about Michal Liberman, Avigdor Liberman’s 20-year-old daughter who became rich overnight and the witnesses who turned away and ran or turned mum.

Knesset member Oded Forer of Yisrael Beitenu attributes the secret of the party’s success to identification with its messages on the issue of religion and state, such as its demands for public transportation on the Sabbath, for liberalizing conversions to Judaism and for imposing the country’s compulsory military draft on ultra-Orthodox men. Liberman has now added demands to scrap the Supermarket Law that obliges food shops and convenience stores to close on the Sabbath, to reevaluate the ongoing attempts to reach a deal with Hamas on the Gaza Strip and to rethink plans for across-the-board budget cuts and tax hikes. He is also demanding that the prime minister “dismantle his bloc of ultra-Orthodox, messianic” supporters. Apropos messianic, on Oct. 13, the outspoken, anti-clerical Liberman posted on his Facebook page a photo of himself with the rabbi who comes to his house every year on the eve of the Sukkoth holiday to confer a blessing on him and his family. The rabbi is a member of the Orthodox Hassidic Chabad movement, known for its messianic leanings.

Liberman has positioned himself as a militant politician willing to give up the trappings of power in order to fight for his principles. He has won the admiration of tens of thousands of Israelis who are grateful to him for refusing to provide Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the 61-seat Knesset majority he needs to stay in power.