Israel Matzav

Video: 'Israeli Arab' MK's heckle Stephen Harper, walk out on him

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke at the Knesset on Monday. 'Israeli Arab' MK's Ahmad Tibi and Abu Arar heckled Harper and walked out of his speech as Harper spoke about what he calls the twisted logic of calling Israel an apartheid state.

Let's go to the videotape.



Afterwards, Tibi complained to Canadian broadcaster CBC that there is discrimination against 'Israeli Arabs.'

"We are 20 per cent of the population, we are suffering discrimination," Tibi said in an interview to air at 5 p.m. ET on CBC News Network. 

"That democracy of Israel is a selective democracy, ethnic democracy. Canada is a democracy and people are equal without relation to their ethnic background. Here, there's a problem with that," he said.

Tibi is a deputy speaker of Knesset and leader of the Arab Movement for Change, or Ta'al.

Canada's foreign policy toward Israel is "biased, non-balanced, and that's why Canada has a very marginal role in the Middle East," Tibi said. 

He and colleague Abu Arar walked out, Tibi said, "to say that we are very much unsatisfied with the remarks and the policy of Prime Minister Harper. It is very diplomatic. It's a protest which is legitimate in any parliament."

...

Tibi said Harper didn't mention the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Canada officially opposes Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967, although Harper has refrained from criticizing Israel for its policy.

"When you are controlling, discriminating, confiscating, occupying lands from one side and putting them in the corner without any basic rights, you are by this way ruling and committing apartheid in the occupied Palestinian Territories," Tibi said.

"If he is talking about freedom, why [is he] totally neglecting the absence of freedom of the Palestinians under occupation? It is a double-standard. These words are moral double-standard from the prime minister of Canada."

 Isn't it funny, then, that every time Avigdor Lieberman proposes a population exchange that would send 'Israeli Arabs' to 'Palestine' and Jews to Israel, the 'Israeli Arabs' object? I wonder why....

Oh yeah - and as you can note above, we discriminate against Tibi so much that he's deputy speaker of the Knesset.

Labels: Ahmed Tibi, Israeli apartheid, Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, Israeli Knesset, Stephen Harper

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:34 AM