Liberman: Real Zionists don't surrender to Arab threats

Liberman urges Zionist Union to support attempts in the Central Elections Committee to ban Israeli-Arab MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) from the election.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Le ministre des Affaires étrangères Avigdor Liberman (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS)
Le ministre des Affaires étrangères Avigdor Liberman
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS)
The Zionist Union is surrendering to Arab terrorism, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday, after the list decided not to support a petition to ban Balad MK Haneen Zoabi from running on the joint list of Arab parties.
“It’s not enough to call yourself the Zionist Union. A real Zionist doesn’t give in to threats from Arabs,” Liberman wrote on Facebook.
According to Liberman, “the surrender to threats from Arabs... is a continuation of the dangerous deterioration in which public institutions give in to Arab terrorism.”
Any such surrender, he added, leads to another one and endangers Israel as a Jewish state.
“I call on them to come to their senses and stand behind their message from several days ago that ‘Zoabi crossed all of the redlines of tolerance and democracy,’ and make sure Zoabi cannot run for the Knesset, because they, too, know that Haneen belongs in Jenin,” he wrote.
The Central Elections Committee will vote on Thursday on whether or not to ban Zoabi. If they vote in favor, she is expected to appeal the decision to the High Court of Justice.
Basic Law: Knesset states that lists of candidates who do any of the following things may not run in a national election: incitement to racism, opposing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and supporting armed conflict by an enemy state or terrorist organization against the country.
Yisrael Beytenu, the Likud, Shas and Bayit Yehudi all signed the petition to bar the Balad MK from running, on grounds that she supports terrorism and opposes Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. Yisrael Beytenu submitted a 50-page compendium of quotes to back their claim, including her statement last summer that Hamas’s kidnapping of three teenage boys was not terrorism.
The Zionist Union said it would vote in favor of banning Zoabi and would also back barring Yahad party candidate Baruch Marzel on grounds of racism, but it changed its position on Monday.
MK Tzipi Livni, No. 2 on the Zionist Union list, said she would wait to see what Attorney- General Yehuda Weinstein said about the matter.
Also Monday, Zoabi said the Zionist Union was the same as the Likud, adding, “This party gives us more evidence that there is no Zionism without racism.”
She argued that “there is no legal justification to requests to disqualify me. I was never arrested for a security offense and have never been indicted.”


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