Analysis: Anti-Israel MK’s departure cause for celebration by all Israelis

The viciously anti-Israel lawmaker Hanin Zoabi announced that she will not run in the upcoming Knesset elections in April.

By Daniel Krygier, World Israel News

Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi announced that she will not run in the upcoming Knesset elections in April, a fact that warms the heart of every pro-Israel supporter.

If there’s a silver lining to Zoabi’s tenure, in which she engaged in acts bordering on treason, it is that it puts paid to the lie that Israel is an apartheid state. The woman was permitted in sit in Israel’s Knesset and broadcast the most outrageous calumnies against the Jewish State.

Indeed, given her behavior, it is highly questionable whether she would have been allowed to hold a public office in any other parliament worldwide, including those in the most liberal Western democracies.

Zoabi belonged to the extremist Arab Balad party, which rejects the existence of a Jewish state. Not even the liberal Scandinavian democracies allow political parties in their parliaments that openly reject the state’s existence.

Just one example: Denmark recently decided to deport Said Mansour, who is convicted of incitement to terrorism against the country. Mansour, a dual Moroccan-Danish citizen, was also stripped of his Danish citizenship. Unlike Zoabi, Mansour did not even hold public office in Denmark.

Zoabi made headlines during the 2010 Gaza flotilla, where she joined anti-Israel extremists aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship. Nine Turkish citizens were killed after they ambushed IDF commandos who initially boarded armed with paintball guns, not expecting to meet violent resistance and not wishing to risk harming the passengers.

During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Zoabi defended the terror group Hamas as it launched rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. She even denied that the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens before the military operation constituted terrorism. 

Ironically, under Hamas’s oppressive Islamist rule, Zoabi would have been oppressed as a woman and a secular Muslim.

Though a Knesset member, Zoabi’s harsh anti-Israel rhetoric made her sound more like a mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies, frequently demonizing Israeli soldiers as “murderers.” It seemed, as far as Zoabi was concerned, that only Arabs were worthy of national rights. 

Like the former Christian Arab MK Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel after charges of cooperation with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, Zoabi consistently challenged and abused the limits of democracy.

Despite Zoabi’s behavior, the Israeli system seemed unable to cope with her. The Knesset Ethics Committee punished Zoabi on several occasions, including a case where she physically attacked a Knesset usher, but Israel’s parliament did not take the step to eject her permanently, a fate she richly deserved by any normal standards.

Though little talked about, many Israeli Arabs are as happy to see Zoabi go as are lovers of Israel. They viewed her extremism as poisoning relations between Arabs and Jews within Israel, leading Jews to view all Arabs as a fifth column. 

For this reason, Zoabi’s departure from the Knesset is good news for all loyal citizens of Israel. 

Arab Members of KnessetIsraeli Arabs