Arab Israeli party denies attacks on IDF soldiers are ‘terrorism’

Spokesman for the chairman of Israel’s second-largest Arab party rejects characterizing violent attacks on IDF soldiers as terrorism, accuses Israel of being a “Jewish supremacist regime.”

By World Israel News Staff

The spokesman for one of Israel’s Arab political parties came under fire Tuesday night after it was revealed that he denied violent attacks on IDF soldiers are a form of terrorism.

During an interview Sunday with the Spanish edition of Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan, Mauricio Lapchik, a spokesman for the Hadash party, refused calls for his party to denounce attacks on IDF soldiers as terrorism.

“In terms of attacks on soldiers, including in the territories…attacks on soldiers are presented as terror attacks, even though I think that…not every attack on soldiers is terrorism, actually,” Lapchik said. “Most attacks are not [terrorism].”

“The definition of a terrorist attack or terrorism is a form of assault targeting a civilian population, not soldiers.”

Lapchik, a longtime far-left activist and member of the radical Peace Now movement, serves as the spokesman for MK Ayman Odeh, chief of the communist Hadash party, a three-member faction which ran in 2022 on a joint list with the smaller Ta’al party.

Days earlier, he compared the ruling Likud party to the radical Sunni group the Muslim Brotherhood, calling it the “Jewish Brotherhood.”

MK Odeh has repeatedly refused to go on the record regarding whether he considers attacks on IDF soldiers to be terrorism.

Earlier this year, Odeh was suspended from the Knesset after he posted a social media comment comparing Israeli hostages returned from Gaza with jailed Arab terrorists freed as part of the hostage agreement.

A vote to expel Odeh failed to reach the 90-MK supermajority required, falling short with just 73 votes.

On Wednesday, Lapchik accused Israel of “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip and in Judea and Samaria, while denouncing Israel as a “Jewish supremacist regime.”

In a post to X, he also denounced pressure on Arab lawmakers to condemn the October 7 massacre.