Criminalizing Arab voices has become Israeli society’s favorite pastime

The Haaretz lead editorial on September 2026:

The Central Elections Committee voted on Wednesday to disqualify Balad party chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh, Hadash MK Ofer Cassif and both Arab parties – the Joint List and Mansour Abbas’ United Arab List – from running in next month’s election. The committee’s disqualification of the Arabs is a permanent ritual. But this time, there was unusual vitriol accompanying the disqualification of Abu Shehadeh.

First, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara announced that there is prima-facie evidence to support disqualifying his candidacy on the grounds of supporting armed struggle against Israel by a terrorist organization. In addition, the committee’s chairman, Justice Noam Sohlberg, took the rare step of participating in the vote. The vitriol also included loud cries of encouragement from the Jewish opposition parties. Both the disqualification and the vitriol it sparked are a document of surrender to the rule of Kahanism and reflected obedience to its rules.

It would have been better had the article Abu Shehadeh’s published on October 8, 2023 – the main evidence in support of disqualifying him – never seen the light of day. What he said was upsetting and painful, and could also be interpreted as support for the massacre Hamas committed on October 7, 2023, or as a call for additional enemy action against Israel. Nevertheless, after he recanted his remarks when he appeared before the elections committee and said that in retrospect, he wouldn’t have written them, the disqualification proceedings should have been dropped. One statement shortly after such a shocking event isn’t a way of life or a practical policy that would justify denying him a fundamental democratic right.

And given all this, we can only wish some of the supporters of Jewish terrorism in the Knesset would have expressed even a smidgen of regret for what they have said about serious incidents – not just once, but as an orderly, systematic doctrine over the course of years, and especially after October 7.

The campaign of persecution against Abu Shehadeh went beyond the substantive issue and became a national sport, a reflection of the government’s values – hatred and criminalization of Arabs. Painting Abu Shehadah as a criminal is part of a broader racist policy toward Arabs, who, in the eyes of large segments of Jewish Israeli society, are guilty of committing or supporting terrorism solely by virtue of their ethnicity. Evidence of this could be seen in the disqualification of United Arab List, or UAL.

This policy is encouraged and fueled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reaps political capital from it. His party submitted motions to disqualify all the Arab parties, including UAL, with which it negotiated in the past in an effort to get it to join a Netanyahu-led government.

Disappointingly, the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which is part of the bloc that ostensibly seeks to repair the country, expressed support for a sweeping disqualification of the Arab parties. Netanyahu’s greatest achievement, which benefits him politically, has been to make even the opposition view Arab voices as criminal.

Any participation in this witch hunt is unacceptable. The Supreme Court must overturn the elections committee’s decision and defend Arabs’ right to vote and be elected to the Knesset.

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