Israel considers ban for far-right candidate over mosque gaffe

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
JERUSALEM | Sun Jan 20, 2013 2:32pm EST

(Reuters) - An Israeli panel weighed a request on Sunday to disqualify a candidate of a powerful far-right party from running in a January 22 election for alluding in a speech to the possibility of seeing one of Islam's holiest shrines in Jerusalem "blown up."

The controversy is over a United States-born parliamentary nominee with the pro-settler Jewish Home party, one of the more serious contenders against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though polls still predict he will win Tuesday's vote.

In a videotaped recording broadcast by Israeli television stations, Jeremy Gimpel is shown as saying in a 2011 speech in Florida, in reference to a Jerusalem holy site seen as part of a core issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"Imagine today if the dome, the golden dome, the dome, I'm being recorded so I can't say, blown up. But let's say the dome was blown up, right? And we laid the cornerstone of the temple in Jerusalem, can you imagine?"

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]