Zoabi confronted in Supreme Court; court ruling to be circumvented?
For those who don't get it, it's a play on words. MK Zoabi's first name is Hanin and the Hebrew word for a crocodile is tanin.... Mondoweiss believes the picture is racist. I don't. I believe that it acknowledges the reality that she is dangerous and sneaky. A snake might have been more appropriate but you would lose the play on words.
Israel's Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday morning about banning Hanin Zoabi, the MK who was a passenger of the Mavi Marmara (among other disloyal offenses), from running in the upcoming Knesset elections. MK Danny Danon (number 5 on the Likud list), who has been leading the charge against Zoabi, is threatening an 'okef bagatz' for the next time in case Zoabi is allowed to run (Under the Israeli constitutional system, we do not have three coequal branches of government, but the Knesset is supposed to be more coequal than the others. The Knesset can pass a law that circumvents (okef in Hebrew) a Supreme Court decision).
Right-wing Likud-Beytenu MK Danny Danon told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that if the Supreme Court allows Balad MK Haneen Zoabi to run in the upcoming election, he is prepared with a 'Plan B': amending the law to prevent future runs.Meanwhile, Zoabi had a rough morning in Jerusalem.
...
Danon, who led the move to disqualify Zoabi, told the Post that he believes he can win in court, despite the fact that it has never disqualified an Arab MK before.
MK Michael Ben-Ari and his Strong Israel party co-founder Itamar Ben Gvir joined a group of some 30 right-wing activists attempting to physically block Balad MK Haneen Zoabi from leaving the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem on Thursday.
At the close of the court hearing, activists started yelling at Zoabi, and a number of them physically engaged with security personnel trying to escort her out. Activists began pushing the guards, who pushed back at the activists and successfully smuggled Zoabi out a back exit.
...
Ben-Ari made a fiery speech at the High Court demanding that it uphold the ban.
"If they don't disqualify Zoabi today, tomorrow she'll throw a bomb in the Knesset," he said after a group of around thirty activists tried to prevent Zoabi from leaving the court. "They need to throw them into Syria."
MK Haneen Zoabi also held a press conference following the confrontation, decrying the state of democracy in Israel. "I never imagined such a thing could happen," she said. "I feel that there has been incitement against me throughout the current Knesset so there's nothing new." She added that it was ironic that in a debate about equality that she was forced to leave through the back door for her safety.
Turning to the court hearing on the Central Elections Committee move to ban her from running in the next Knesset, Zoabi said "attempts to disqualify me are an attack on everybody who is against the occupation."
Balad party chairman Jamal Zahalka, who also spoke at the conference, said they had been set upon by a "group of fascists," and blamed court security for the incident.The odds that Zoabi will be disqualified from running are somewhere between slim and none, even though on the face of the statute (which disqualifies anyone who disavows Israel's Jewish and democratic character) she ought to be. But hey - if the United States can have a communist President....
Labels: Hanin Zoabi, Israel is a Jewish state, Knesset elections 2013
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:30 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home