Ayman Odeh at a hearing for the disqualification of Hadash-Ta’al parties, March 13th, 2019. (photo credit: YONAH JEREMY BOB)
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The lawyer for a group of right-wing political officials told the High Court of Justice on Wednesday that comments made by Knesset MKs of the Israeli-Arab Hadash-Ta’al parties should lead to their disqualification due to allegedly supporting terror.
Lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Hadash party leader Ayman Odeh would not condemn bombing IDF soldiers in an interview with Israel Radio.
Because of these and other statements by Hadash-Ta’al MKs, which he said support armed conflict against Israel and deny the country’s Jewishness, Ben-Gvir called on the High Court to override the Central Election Committee and disqualify the parties from running for the Knesset.
Last week, while the committee disqualified one Arab party candidate, Ofer Kassif, it refused to disqualify the entire list of the Hadash-Ta’al parties.
Ben-Gvir had an uphill battle with Adalah director Hassan Jabareen saying that the appeal to the High Court to disqualify Hadash-Ta’al had been filed in bad faith.
Jabareen said that Ben-Gvir had even privately admitted this to him.
The Adalah lawyer said that it was highly irregular for a minority of committee officials to ask the High Court to disqualify a candidate if the committee accepted the person.
Ben-Gvir recounted that Oudeh was asked on Israel Radio by Kalman Liberman whether using a bomb against IDF soldiers was legitimate and that Oudeh replied he does not choose what is legitimate and what isn’t. According to Ben-Gvir, Oudeh said “the Palestinian nation decides what is fitting” with regards to using violence and that he supported Palestinian “resistance” against Israel’s occupation.
High Court President Esther Hayut pressed Jabareen that while he could make fancy interpretations of what Oudeh had said that Ben-Gvir’s reading of Oudeh seemed accurate.
She challenged Jabareen to give a different interpretation.
Jabareen responded that this was not the correct legal test.
Rather, he said that as long as a statement could be interpreted in two different directions, that it could not be evidence to disqualify a candidate from running in elections.
Further, he said that to disqualify an entire list from running for elections, there needed to be evidence of concrete actions – possibly criminal investigations of multiple candidates.
In contrast, he said that in Ben-Gvir’s section of proof of concrete actions by Hadash-Ta’al, which warranted disqualifications, there were no actions, only a list of more statements.
Ben-Gvir responded that these parties have supported killing IDF soldiers and settlers.
He added: “Allowing these people to run for Knesset puts Israeli democracy in danger.”
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