The Central Elections Committee (CEC) voted Wednesday to bar MK Ofer Cassif – who supports the release of Palestinian Marwan Barghouti, currently jailed for terrorism – from running in the October 27 election, accepting a Likud petition despite the attorney-general’s position that the evidence did not meet the stringent legal threshold for disqualification.
Nineteen committee members supported disqualifying Cassif, five opposed the decision, and two abstained.
The decision is not final. Under Basic Law: The Knesset, a committee decision disqualifying an individual candidate requires Supreme Court approval before taking effect. The court is set to hear the election disqualification cases next week.
Cassif, a Hadash member placed sixth on the Joint List slate, said after the vote that the committee was political and that he had not expected a different result. He told KAN Reshet Bet that he was convinced the Supreme Court would overturn the decision.
The Likud petition alleged that Cassif’s statements and political activity negated Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state and demonstrated support for armed struggle against Israel by a terrorist organization – two of the three grounds for disqualification under Section 7A of the Basic Law.
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman had taken the opposite position, finding that the material submitted against Cassif – while including reprehensible statements and conduct – was insufficient to establish any of the statutory grounds for barring him.
Adalah, the legal aid center representing Cassif, said, “It is hard to believe that the Likud, when it filed this motion, genuinely thought it rested on evidence even remotely connected to the grounds for disqualification.”
It continued, “Israeli law does not permit barring a candidate from the Knesset simply for criticizing the army and the government for committing war crimes against Palestinians, and certainly not for supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” Adalah said it was confident that the Supreme Court would accept its position.
Sohlberg cautions against overly broad use of defensive democracy
Opening the hearing, committee chairman and Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg described Section 7A as an instrument of “defensive democracy,” allowing a democracy to protect itself against those who use its freedoms to undermine it.
He also warned that applying the provision too broadly could damage the same democratic values it was intended to protect.
“The stronger the power, the greater the caution required in exercising it,” Sohlberg said, noting that disqualifying a candidate also denies voters the ability to support that person.
The Supreme Court has interpreted Section 7A narrowly, requiring clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence that a prohibited objective is central to a candidate’s political activity. Offensive or extreme statements alone are not sufficient; previous rulings have generally required a sustained pattern of conduct.
Attorney Ilan Bombach, representing the Likud, argued that the evidence showed such a pattern. He cited Cassif’s appeals to international bodies and calls for sanctions against Israel and Israeli leaders, as well as his support for releasing Barghouti.
Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure, is serving five life sentences after being convicted for his role in terrorist attacks that killed five people. Cassif has called for his release and described him as a potential leader of the Palestinian people.
Bombach also argued that Cassif’s condemnation of the October 7 massacre did not erase his other statements and conduct. Section 7A covers support expressed “either explicitly or implicitly,” he said, and was intended to prevent anti-democratic forces from obtaining power through democratic institutions.
Legal advisory argues Cassif has not supported armed struggle against Israel
Anat Goldstein, presenting the legal advisory, told the committee that the accumulated evidence still did not establish that Cassif supported armed struggle or met either of the other disqualification grounds.
Cassif’s efforts to generate international political or legal pressure against Israel did not amount to support for armed struggle, she said. Similar allegations were considered during a separate attempt to expel him from the Knesset after he supported South Africa’s proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
That effort failed in February 2024, when 85 lawmakers voted to expel Cassif, and 11 opposed the measure. Ninety votes were required.
Goldstein said that a 2023 statement in which Cassif referred to Palestinians fighting the IDF as “freedom fighters” came closer to the statutory prohibition. A single statement, however, was insufficient to demonstrate the sustained and dominant political objective required by Supreme Court precedent.
Other statements attributed to Cassif, including comparisons between Israeli leaders and Nazis, were deeply objectionable but had previously been found insufficient to justify disqualification, she said.
Adalah general director and attorney Hassan Jabareen argued that the Likud had failed to connect Cassif’s parliamentary and political activity to any of Section 7A’s prohibited objectives.
“If an elected official can’t say what an ordinary citizen can, what are they doing in the Knesset?” Jabareen asked.
He said contacting the United Nations, alleging genocide in Gaza, or seeking international pressure against a government could not, without additional evidence, be equated with support for armed struggle.
Cassif says petitions meant to remove war opposition
Adalah attorney Ariel Remez similarly argued that the petition’s allegation that Cassif had aided the enemy during wartime resembled an accusation of a criminal offense. If the evidence supported that allegation, he said, the appropriate response would be an indictment rather than an election disqualification proceeding.
Cassif told the committee that the petitions were intended not only to remove Arab parties but also to silence opposition to the war and prevent voters from choosing representatives who shared their views. He called the effort fascist and an attempt to delegitimize Jewish-Arab political partnership.
The dispute will now return to familiar ground. In 2019, the CEC also voted to disqualify Cassif, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision after finding that the evidence did not meet the high threshold under either the Jewish-and-democratic-state ground or the armed-struggle ground.
Cassif’s case was the first in two days of committee hearings on requests to bar candidates and lists from the election.
The committee continued Wednesday with petitions against Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh, Ra’am, the Joint List, and Balad.
Requests against Otzma Yehudit, the Religious Zionist Party-Zehut list, and The Democrats are scheduled for Thursday. The committee’s decisions will then move to the Supreme Court, either for mandatory approval of individual-candidate disqualifications or through appeals challenging its decisions concerning party lists.