MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) said on Thursday that Israeli policy was responsible for the terrorist attack that killed five Israelis in Bulgaria on July 18.
“Israel is not a victim, and even when civilians are killed, the occupying Israeli policy is to blame,” Zoabi told Channel 10.
“If there was no occupation, no repression and no blockade, then this wouldn't have happened,” she said during an interview at Haifa’s Gordon College of Education.
According to Channel 2, Zoabi also came out against Israel’s efforts to have the Palestinian massacre of 11 Israeli sportsmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics remembered with a moment of silence during the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics on Friday.
“Why don’t they commemorate the Palestinians that Israel murdered,” Channel 2 quoted Zoabi as saying. “If Israel would say that it recognizes the injustice it has done to Palestinians, then it would also be logical to ask the world to remember all the sides. But it is hypocritical to continue to bring up the victims of 40 years ago, while Israel wants to hide the victims of recent years.”
Zoabi on Friday denied the reports, saying that the media had ignored her condemnation the murder of Jewish civilians in Burgas, Bulgaria, and her participation in a minute of silence in their memory in the Knesset.
The media, she said, also ignored her central contention: that the “occupation” is the central act of terrorism, the center of conflict and suffering in the region.
In July 2010, the Knesset Ethics Committee punished the lawmaker for participating in the May 2010 Gaza protest flotilla, on board the Mavi Marmara, forbidding her to take part in all Knesset discussions until the end of the summer session – a decision Zoabi called “the decision of an automatic right-wing, racist majority.”