Purge: Netanyahu government tries to ban Arabs and Communists from parliament

Hadash leaders at the front of a march protesting Netanyahu's criminal war. | Photo via Hadash

Smearing lawmakers who oppose the war and ethnic cleansing underway in Gaza as “supporters of terrorism,” the far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing a racist and anti-communist purge of the country’s parliament.

Ofir Katz, a leader of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and chairman of the right-wing coalition that controls parliament, put the purge bill on the agenda of the Knesset’s Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs for this week. The debate is scheduled to open Monday.

The anti-democratic move would broaden the legal definition of what it means to support terror in order to block opposition candidates from running for parliament in the next elections. It would also strip the Supreme Court of its authority to disqualify candidates, handing total power to the conservative-controlled Central Elections Committee.

The primary targets of this effort are the Knesset’s Arab members, the bulk of whom were elected on the list of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) coalition, which is led by the Communist Party of Israel. Hadash members have been the most consistent anti-war voices in parliament.

There is apparently also an effort in the works to ban another electoral coalition that formerly backed Netanyahu but now opposes the war, the Islamist and conservative United Arab List (Ra’am). It is not yet clear if the same legislation or a separate bill is to be used to take down this group.

Previously, election law required documented proof of “mass manifestations of support for terrorism” to prevent a candidacy. Explicit or implicit support for the “armed struggle of an enemy state or terrorist organization” was deemed a necessity for imposing an election ban.

That hurdle would be eliminated, essentially handing blanket authority to the government to decide who may or may not run for office. Now, simply opposing the war, criticizing the crimes of the Israeli military, or supporting the Palestinian people’s right to a state would be equivalent to “support for terrorism.”

In a further power grab, the Central Elections Committee will be allowed to block entire party lists rather than just individual candidates, and the Supreme Court would be reduced to playing the role of appeals court for decisions made by the government.

The bill accuses the Supreme Court of being too lax on supposed supporters of terrorism in the past, even though most scholars and democratic activists say the high court was actually very heavy-handed in issuing candidacy bans. If Katz and Likud have their way, the Supreme Court will be removed from the equation.

Talking the language of authoritarian double-speak, the proposal says it must destroy free speech in order to save democracy, distorting the actual views of its opponents along the way. “Those who cheer for terrorist murderers and their ilk have no place in the Israeli Knesset…. A democracy that desires to live must protect itself from those who seek to destroy it.”

This parliamentary purge is the latest effort to silence Hadash and the Communists who lead it – none of whom have ever cheered on terrorists or murderers. In fact, by criticizing the war crimes of the Israeli Defense Forces, they’ve done the exact opposite.

In November 2023, just weeks into the war, CPI member Aida Touma-Sliman was suspended from the Knesset for two months after she criticized the military’s actions in Gaza.

One of the most prominent Palestinian Israeli leaders of the anti-war movement, Touma-Sliman is a regular speaker at protests and events both within Israel and abroad. Just days before her suspension, she addressed a U.S. audience about the importance of the fight for a ceasefire at a forum hosted by the CPUSA.

In remarks announcing then that she’d been temporarily removed from the legislature, Touma-Sliman remained defiant:

“In the only democracy in the Middle East, a parliamentarian who is representing almost 20% of the citizens of Israel is not allowed to speak out. And why is that? Because I raised questions about the war because I’m against the war and against hurting civilians from both sides.”

Despite the suspension, she pledged to continue speaking out for peace. “I promise you,” Touma-Sliman declared, “my values…will be heard. Nobody can silence me.”

In the year since she has made good on the promise. Two weeks ago, she alerted the world that the Israeli occupation forces were initiating the “Generals’ Plan,” which envisions the final removal by force or death of all people still remaining in the northern Gaza Strip.

In February of this year, Likud and its far-right allies conspired to engineer the impeachment of Ofer Cassif, another anti-war lawmaker from Hadash. Angered by Cassif’s support for South Africa’s International Court of Justice case alleging genocide in Gaza, the Netanyahu government tried unsuccessfully to remove him from office.

At the time, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called the failed move “a shameful act of McCarthyism and gagging.” The impeachment motion secured 85 of the required 90 votes, with nearly all legislators from the right-wing coalition parties – Likud, the Religious Zionist Party, and the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit – supporting it.

Like Touma-Sliman, Cassif is a member of the Communist Party, but he is also a special target for Netanyahu because he is Hadash’s sole Jewish member in the Knesset.

The right-wing media often attempts to portray Cassif as a traitor to Judaism because he has long been an opponent of Zionism, calling it a “racist ideology and practice which espouses Jewish supremacy.” In April 2021, he was beaten by Israeli police when protesting against illegal evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Now, with its anti-Arab and anti-communist purge proposal, the Netanyahu government hopes to permanently remove Touma-Sliman, Cassif, and its other critics.

On Sunday, Al-Ittihad, the CPI’s Arabic-language newspaper, denounced Katz’s bill as “fascist” and “incitement-driven.” Despite the anti-terror façade, the editors wrote that the law is purely aimed at “facilitating the prevention of Arab lists and representatives from running for the Knesset.”

The party’s Hebrew outlet, Zo Haderekh, denounced the bill as a blatant effort to “prevent public and parliamentary dissent against the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the endless war in Gaza and Lebanon.”

The CPI sees the purge plot as not only about Gaza but also as a tactic in a larger strategy by Netanyahu to secure a “permanent majority” in parliament for the far-right’s political agenda generally.

By eliminating his most stringent critics from Hadash and strangling Arab representation in the legislature, the prime minister hopes to rig the next elections – prolonging his hold on power, giving him free rein to execute the war as he wishes, and avoiding prosecution on charges of corruption.

Passing the legislation won’t be easy, however. Previous Netanyahu efforts to sideline the Supreme Court have sparked massive protests and forced him to pull back. This time, though, he and his allies hope to manipulate public opinion around the war and inflame anti-Arab racism to achieve their goals.

The Communist Party predicts that if enough public pressure can be mobilized against the anti-democratic law, the government will fold, just as it has in the past. Defeating the purge is another front in the struggle to stop the genocide and occupation.

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CONTRIBUTOR

C.J. Atkins

C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People's World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left.