It sounded quite unthinkable, but Knesset member Haneen Zoabi (Balad) blamed Israel for the recent slaying of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. “Israel is not a victim, not even when civilians are killed,” she declared in an interview with Channel 10.
Zoabi elaborated: “Israel’s policy of occupation is at fault. If there was no occupation, no repression and no blockade, then this wouldn’t have happened.”
Her comments failed to rouse furor among the Israeli public, which has grown inured to brazen provocation from Arab MKs bankrolled by Israeli taxpayers. Our local media reported the story, but on the whole abstained from comment.
Zoabi’s rationalization of mass murder went right under the radar of the international community. We need only imagine the ferocious maelstrom had an Israeli parliamentarian dared hint that indiscriminately murdering Palestinian tots, their mothers, fathers and all other Arab civilians is tolerable because they have it coming.
The pandemonium would be nothing less than horrific, as would the bad press tarnishing the Israeli collective.
But this sentiment sounded by an Arab Israeli not only excites no censure, it is probably received sympathetically abroad. It is the very spurious narrative that overseas opinion-molders accept, cultivate and disseminate.
Zoabi is an old hand at skewing the truth and championing terrorism.
She hobnobbed with Hamas leaders, praised them to the hilt, participated in the Mavi Marmara provocation of 2010, partied with the terrorists released in the Schalit swap last year and authored an inflammatory “Forward” to Israel-basher Ben White’s latest book, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy.
There she castigates Israel as a “colonialist racist project.” She explicitly applauds exploiting “the power inherent in democracy to undermine the moral and political legitimacy of Israel.”
Her pearls of wisdom include the following: “A Jewish state leads to the end of democracy,” “The largest threat to Zionism is democracy” and “to demand full civic and national equality is actually to demand the end of Zionism. So we don’t hate Zionism. Zionism hates democracy.”
Zoabi feigns innocence as a promoter of democracy. Her bottom line is that the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state is democracy’s praiseworthy, progressive objective. To oppose said objective is undemocratic.
Thus democracy is successfully assaulted by using the democratic idiom against it. Democrats fear raising a ruckus lest they be admonished for not being as self-destructively democratic as cynical anti-democrats oblige them to be. Willy-nilly, democrats turn into timid accomplices in their own destruction.
This, perhaps, is why most Israeli politicians did not bother responding to Zoabi’s justification of the premeditated homicide of tourists on European soil for the sole crime of being Israeli.
It is easy to factually refute Zoabi’s contentions. Terrorism and massacres were carried out by Arabs against Jews long before the existence of the Jewish state, the start of so-called occupation and certainly without connection to any sort of blockade. Local Arabs sporadically went on ghastly large-scale killing sprees from 1920 onward.
But more chilling than Zoabi’s utter mendacity are her moral lapses. The none-too-concealed subtext of her argument is that there are no limits to what may be done to any Israeli, of any age, of any gender and of any status, because Israelis (and by extension Jews) bring it on themselves.
It is permissible to bomb them when they go on a school bus, when they ride a city bus or when they board a tourist bus. No restraints or restrictions are obligatory when combating Jews. Zoabi’s allegation that Israelis are “occupiers” suffices to justify any and all manner of gruesome punishments for that crime.
Zoabi’s version of humanism is to declare that any Israeli deserves the death penalty by virtue of nothing more than the fact that she determines that Israel is the incontrovertible villain of the Mideastern saga.
Zoabi may again feign innocence and claim that this is not quite what she said, but this is where her logic inescapably leads.
We are not necessarily calling for punitive moves against her sedition and incitement. We are just wondering about the worrisome absence of outrage and revulsion, especially from Israel’s Arab sector.
Bucking the Trend ... 
Zoabi is a mean and sorry clown…I just wonder, if Israel does herself a favour, by keeping such clowns ?
Both the word and the concept behind it, “occupation”, are not the brainchild of Ms. (for lack of another address) Zoabi.
We, the Israeli public, coined it, disseminated it, and enhanced it to perfection. Occupation!
This does not imply that Ms. Zoabi is a “victim” of our recent past. Ms. Zoabi is a by-product of our hallowed freedom of speech. Mind you, I am all for freedom of speech although it’s a double-edged sword. If the Wiktionary has it right, “double-edged sword” is etimologically translated from the Arabic (what a coincidence) expression “sayf zou hadayn”. There you go.
Nor Ms. Zoabi’s credo that we (Israelis) “had it coming” is her original creation. When Israelis muted from underdogs to a standing-on-its-feet nation (with a clenched fist), we lost the sympathy of the enlightened world, and became brutal-cruel occupiers. Exterminated beloved vs. alive and kicking. You do the math.
I would like to believe and to hope with all my mind and heart that a time will come when we shall live in peace with our neighbors.
Isaiah 65:25
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.
Who’s the wolf and who’s the lamb?
I wonder on both counts.
Let me correct myself: “When Israelis mutated from…”, not “…muted…”.
I apologize.
Charly
‘Our local media reported the story, but on the whole abstained from comment.’
I’m reminded about a Rabbi who wrote a book or commentary on Tanach and was targeted by the Israeli police for interrogation on ‘incitement’. This while the evil enemies of Israel talk ‘freely’.
It’s easy to see how the godless left in Israel who hate God are not well,given over to the darkness and soon to meet their final reward.
I strongly believe God has had enough of their evil ways and judgment comes to Israel’s perverse and decadent children of Belial as it has arrived over Syria for hosting so many terrorist groups in Damascus.
Marcel
http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com/
We let it all happen out of share stupidity or misplaced leniency. I can hardly believe that there is nothing in the law that could not be applied to prevent and stop hostile, anti-state elements to aggress us from with-in. Where is the Attorney General..wake up Yeuda Weinstein there is a job to do!
Free speech is free speech. That’s the way it goes.
In Israel, even the genocidal maniac Zoabi has that right.
Jews in the Jewish state, however, do not.
This isn’t free speech. It is aiding and abetting or providing aid and comfort to the enemy. To paraphrase, free speech is NOT a mutual suicide pact.
True. Free speech is not a suicide pact.
The suicide and aid and comfort to the enemy is in Israel’s habitually lop-sided charges of incitement. Zoabi can say whatever she pleases about Jews, Jews almost nothing in return.
No Sarah, they did not go under the radar. They were studiously ignored.
“the worrisome absence of outrage and revulsion, especially from Israel’s Arab sector.” – We should be more worried about the State that is prepared to dismantle itself, step by step, rather than have the courage to stand up to its delegitimisers – more worried, indeed, about the Knesset and the High Court than about the woman in this article. In fact, I’d argue that her insolent contempt for this country’s parliamentary and judicial system deserves much more respect than the system itself. It was, if we may remind ourselves, this system, in conjunction with the country’s media and academia, that was “brave” enough to imprison the glaringly innocent Margalit Har-Shefi. After this, is there anything that can suprise us?
I quite understand the point of the article.(which is very well taken) Where is there a single Palestinian rising up to denounce Haneen Zoabi, and tell her to be silent? However, perhaps Ms. Zoabi has broken a law or two somewhere, and could be forced to resign from the Knesset, in some way? In the United States, there are a few Congressman and Senators who can justifiably be labeled “anti-American,” but I don’t believe any are as outspoken as Ms. Zoabi is about Israel.