Arab MK likens Syria to Gaza, accuses Israel of 'hypocritical' responses

Zoabi: "Israelis' conscience work only when the IDF is not to blame."

By UDI SHAHAM
Updated: APRIL 7, 2017 03:58
Haneen Zoabi speaks at Central Elections Committee hearing to ban her from running for Knesset (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Haneen Zoabi speaks at Central Elections Committee hearing to ban her from running for Knesset
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Israelis are hypocrites for condemning and expressing shock at the harsh images of the deadly poison gas attacks in Syria, but remaining silent when it comes to Gaza, MK Haneen Zoabi (Joint List) said on Thursday.
Zoabi, in an interview with Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet, asked why she was never asked to comment on the Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip in which children were killed.
“This is hypocrisy,” she said. “Why didn’t you interview me when you [the IDF] slaughtered the children and babies in Gaza? If the Syrian Army were coming to liberate the occupied Golan Heights, would your conscience kick in or would you attack the children of Syria and bombard them?
Aftermath of suspected chemical gas attack in Idlib , Syria on April 4, 2017 (REUTERS)
“It is outrageous and hypocritical,” she added.
Zoabi condemned Syrian President Bashar Assad, but added that the IDF is no better. “Bashar is war criminal, and what he is doing since the Syrian revolution started in 2011 is a massacre. I have been saying it not just since yesterday, when we found out about the use of chemical weapons, but for the past five years.
“But the Israeli army [soldiers] are war criminals as well,” she added. “Both of them [Assad and the IDF] should be put on trial in the [International Court of Justice in The] Hague. Both of them are saying that they do will whatever they can to win.”
After a vocal argument with the hosts of the radio show, Zoabi was cut of the air.
MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) said that Zoabi’s remarks reveal the true face of the mostly Arab Joint List.
“While hundreds of people are being slaughtered by chemical weapons in Syria, they are trying to use this massacre as another opportunity to defame the State of Israel and the IDF,” he said. “Now we have no doubt about the Joint List and its true intentions.
“I recommend they go back to Syria and Gaza, and express their opinions freely in the democracies there,” Forer said.
This comes after Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh sparked a controversy on Wednesday when he said in the Knesset plenum that his heart “aches for the children in Syria, just as it is saddened to see the children killed in Yemen or Gaza.”
Odeh refused to respond to fellow lawmakers who asked him to clarify who is responsible to the death of children in the Gaza Strip.