Tibi criticizes police for stopping Arab protest against Zionist Union

The Magistrate’s Court in Hadera ordered all six of the protesters to be released on Sunday, Israeli Arab media reported.

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
UAL-Ta'al MK Ahmad Tibi holds a Palestinian flag on Temple Mount (photo credit: Courtesy)
UAL-Ta'al MK Ahmad Tibi holds a Palestinian flag on Temple Mount
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Ta’al Party chairman MK Ahmed Tibi, fourth on the Joint Arab List in the upcoming elections, criticized the police on Sunday for breaking up a protest the day before against the leaders of the Zionist Union on a visit to the Wadi Ara region in the North.
Four residents of the Arab town of Arara and two from Umm el-Fahm were arrested for allegedly attacking police officers, according to the police website. A number of police officers were lightly wounded.
The Hadera Magistrate’s Court ordered all six of the protesters to be released on Sunday, the Israeli Arab Panet newspaper reported.
“Why were the protesters against the Zionist Union conference in Wadi Ara stopped?” asked Tibi in a tweet. “Why use brutal violence against them?” he argued.
“Do they arrest Jews that demonstrate against Herzog or Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu]?” Protesters yelled, “You have blood on your hands,” and greeted Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni with waving Palestinian flags and holding signs such as “Zionist Camp - Radical Camp,” Channel 10 reported.
They also said there was no difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Herzog, the Israeli-Arab website Bokra.net reported.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, reacting to the incident, wrote on Facebook that this is “more proof for those that still needed it, also for Herzog and Livni themselves, that some of the Israeli Arabs are not only enemies of the ‘Zionist Union,’ but enemies of Zionism as a whole.”
Liberman added that “just as Hamas was outlawed in Egypt today [as a terrorist organization], this is how we need to outlaw these extremist elements and take their Israeli citizenship and remove them from Israel.”
The Zionist Union also began publishing campaign advertisements in the Israeli Arab media.
A banner appeared on the Bokra.net and Panet websites containing a picture of Herzog and fellow Labor candidate, Israeli Arab Zouheir Bahloul, a former soccer commentator.