Joint Arab List MKs' diligent anti-Israel activity abroad is intended to slander the nation and taint it in every international forum. Now they are eyeing the U.N. in an attempt to have Israel condemned over the nation-state law.
On Sunday, the heads of the Zionist parties in Israel – both coalition and opposition, aside from Meretz – condemned those MKs' conduct. They excoriated Joint Arab List Chairman Ayman Odeh, MK Ahmad Tibi, and their colleagues for wanting to have their cake and eat it, too – enjoy the wealth of privileges given to legislators (broad immunity for anything they do as part of their public service; a high salary; a car and three aides; total freedom of expression, including denunciation of the police and the IDF and its soldiers; visits abroad as part of delegations) while also openly working to undermine the state.
The Joint Arab List members are furious that the Arabs in Israel are treated as second-class citizens, but they declare that they belong to the Palestinian people and embrace the Arab residents of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as their brothers, including Hamas – which controls the Gaza Strip and tries daily to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel, and until very recently were setting fire to tens of thousands of acres of Israeli farmland, forests, and nature preserves.
The Arab MKs freely admit that they do not feel the Israeli flag or national anthem represent them. MK Yousef Jabareen said last week that "the state symbols – the menorah and the flag – are religious, Zionist symbols that are exclusive to the majority, and the State of Israel has failed for 70 years to adopt symbols that represent all its citizens." MK Jamal Zahalka called the Israeli flag "less [significant] than a rag."
When these Arab MKs were elected, they took a public oath of loyalty to the State of Israel and to faithfully fulfill their roles in the Knesset. Is that obligation meaningless? Are the Arab MKs' words devoid of meaning?
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein was right when he said on Sunday that these MKs "are undermining the state; although they receive a salary from the government and enjoy all the parliamentary tools, they have the audacity to slander our name in the world. Anyone who collaborates with the Palestinian Authority against Israel should ask himself whether he belongs in the Palestinian or the Israeli parliament."
Sadly, even the Israeli media, at least some of it, indirectly assists the Joint Arab List's hostile activity against the state by giving it disproportionate coverage. We saw a clear example of that on Sunday when the Hadashot News broadcast opened with the sensationalist item that Arabs MKs were pushing the U.N. to pass a condemnation of Israel that would embarrass the nation.
It might have been justifiable to highlight the report if it had been anything new, but in the weeks since the nation-state bill passed into law, the Arab MKs haven't stopped reporting on their own widespread cooperation with European entities hostile to Europe (such as the European Union) against Israel, trumpeting that next Monday, representatives of the Joint Arab List are slated to meet with European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini in Brussels.
The main question is how, if at all, to handle this embarrassing phenomenon. No one is considering placing limits on the Arab MKs' parliamentary immunity or their freedom of expression, which they sometimes give completely free reign. It's doubtful whether a proposal by Knesset House Committee chairman MK Yoav Kisch to amend the ethics rules to allow any MK who acts against Israel or cooperates with action against Israel in the international arena to be punished will be adopted. Is it likely that the Arab MKs themselves, most of whom are intelligent, educated individuals, will realize that they are going too far and that, rather than inciting hatred and undermining the government, it's time they behaved with the self-restraint we should expect from elected officials?
