And on election day the miracle happened, really a miracle:
for the first time in Israel's history
a list which was completely new -
not the result of previous parties -
passed the threshold.
We had passed. We received nearly 1.5%.
That means that if we had received 1000 votes more
we would have had two mandates according
to the method of counting the surplus votes at that time.
What happened was that only I was elected with that Shin.
We had selected the letter Shin.
I always really liked this letter because it is a letter -
so it can be shaped in many different ways graphically.
And Shin is a good word.
Our slogan was 'liberation, partnership, equality'.
shin, shin, shin
Our readers, literally, put us in the Knesset -
something that I think is unprecedented in the world.
The world has a lot of parties that published newspapers.
The most famous instance is Lenin's party - the Bolsheviks
put out a newspaper called Iskra before they came to power.
But for a newspaper to establish a political party?
There is no such thing. This is something that is entirely impossible.
And that is how we generated a revolution
and that's how we got to the Knesset.
Before the election we had the last election meeting
at the Kameri Theater, where Beit Lessin is located today, I think.
It was a great meeting.
There are many photographs of it. The crowd -
the very best of Israeli youth,
a great crowd
not a marginal crowd but a crowd that was absolutely in the center.
And immediately after the victory
we celebrated with another victory celebration,
another such meeting.
There was great happiness,
it is impossible to describe what joy there was.
How did we compile the list of candidates?
I just did a really simple thing: everyone except for Shalom Cohen,
to whom I was obligated so he had to be my number two,
I took from among the people
who had instigated rebellions
in Israel in various fields.
There was Amnon Zichroni, who went on hunger strike
in order not to enlist in the IDF
and so on, each of them. People who for years
had conducted all kinds of major struggles
and HaOlam HaZeh had covered them,
so I knew them all.
I collected them all, those who agreed,
and that was how I compiled the list of candidates.
I didn't select 120, I settled for 60,
but it was a very nice list.
And with this we went to the Knesset
and that was how we reached our first day in the Knesset.