Joint List MK Yazbak: We want ‘to divest’ Israel of Judaism and Zionism

Balad’s platform opposes a solely Jewish state and wants to see Israel defined as a state of all its citizens.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Member of Knesset Heba Yazbak stated her plan to divest Israel of its “Jewish and Zionist existence,” in two Arabic interviews, Arutz 7 reports.

Yazbak is a member of the Balad faction of the Joint Arab List, which finished third in the March elections with 15 seats.

Balad’s platform opposes a solely Jewish state and wants to see Israel defined as a state of all its citizens.

“We want to fight – with all our strength – racism, apartheid and Zionism. We will work with all our strength on our project of  ‘a state of all its citizens,'” Yazbak said.

In a second interview, she said, “This plan opposes and fights the country’s Zionism and prides itself of divesting the country of its Jewish and Zionist existence, and at the same time preserves our national identity, without sacrificing full citizenship and without sacrificing citizenship.”

The Central Elections Committee barred MK Yazbak from running in the latest elections due to her support for terrorists, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision in a 5-4 vote.

Yazbak faced criticism over several Facebook posts, including one in May 2015 in which she praised “the martyr fighter Samir Kuntar” after he was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Syria that year.

Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, became infamous in 1979 when he participated in a terrorist attack on the northern Israeli city of Nahariya as part of the Palestine Liberation Front.

During the attack, Kuntar shot Danny Haran to death in front of his 4-year-old daughter Einat. He then smashed Einat’s skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle.

Kuntar spent 29 years in prison before being released in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah.

Yazbak’s party proposed a bill titled “Basic Law: A State of All Its Citizens” in 2018, but the bill was dismissed by the Knesset Presidium before reaching the floor.

Instead, the Knesset passed “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.” The law says that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

This echoes the words of the 1948 Declaration of Independence, which declares “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”

The Declaration also appealed “to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

Arab Members of KnessetHeba YazbakJoint List