Coalition MK marks 55 years of ‘occupation’ alongside anti-Zionist lawmaker

Meretz MK invites Breaking the Silence and other far-left NGOs to speak at Knesset about “occupation” on national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem.

By World Israel News Staff

A lawmaker from the far-left Meretz party, which is currently part of Israel’s governing coalition, announced that he would co-lead a Knesset caucus commemorating 55 years of “occupation” on the Jerusalem Day holiday, which celebrates the liberation and reunification of Israel’s capital city.

MK Mossi Raz, who attended a left-wing protest at the Homesh outpost over the weekend, partnered with anti-Zionist Joint List MK Aida Touma-Suleiman for a meeting on Sunday that focuses on Israel’s alleged wrongdoing.

“For 55 years, we have ruled, contrary to our own morals, justice, and both our and their interests, another people,” Raz said in a statement.

“This rule harms all aspects of Palestinian life and costs both peoples lives and security. This is probably the most important issue affecting our lives here, and this is why it needs to be raised and discussed in the Knesset as well. Thank you to the important human rights organizations and those struggling against the occupation set to take part in the event.”

Far-left groups including Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din, the Committee Against Torture, HaMoked, Fighters for Peace, Physicians for Human Rights, Gisha, Emek Shaveh, and Rabbis for Human Rights were invited by Raz and Touma-Suleiman to speak during the caucus, Israel Hayom reported.

Despite billions of shekels in funding to the Arab community, retroactive legalization of previously unrecognized Bedouin settlements and the connection of those illegally built communities to Israel’s national electricity grid, Touma-Suleiman bemoaned what she sees as a far-right government.

“Land grabbing, settlement expansion, settler terrorism, arrests without trial, the killing of protesters, and a criminal blockade, these are the faces of the occupation. These are all the faces of Israel under the ‘change’ government,” she said.

“From the Knesset, it is our obligation to remind Israel and the world that the cycle of horror will not stop as long as the Palestinian people live under occupation and blockade. Only the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel will ensure freedom and security for both peoples,” she added.

Touma-Suleiman’s characterization of Palestinian terror as being triggered by the “occupation” does not acknowledge the extensive history of Arab violence towards Jews in the region, long predating the establishment of the State of Israel.

In the years preceding Israel’s creation, Arab locals regularly attacked Jewish civilians. In 1929, for instance, some 70 Jews were tortured and massacred in Hebron, marking the end of a centuries-old Jewish population in the municipality, which is considered one of the holiest cities in Judaism.

Later that same year, an additional 40 Jews were murdered by Arabs in Tzfat, another holy Jewish city with hundreds of years of continual Jewish presence.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded by arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat in 1964, three years before the “occupation” of eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.