The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called for the three Israeli Arab Members of Knesset (MKs) who attended the signing this week in Cairo of the unity agreement between Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, which controls Gaza, o be removed from the Knesset. The three Arab MKs, Ahmed Tibi, Mohammed Barakeh and Taleb a-Sanaa, have long records of hostility to the country in whose parliament they serve and their attendance was criticized by individual Knesset Members as well as the Almagor Terror Victims Association.
National Union Chairman MK Yaacov Katz called on Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin to intervene and “throw out the traitors and the murderers and the collaborators with those who want to destroy” the very Knesset in which they serve. MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) said that he “welcomed the Arab MKs” participation in the ceremony and hoped, of course, that “they stay there and not return to Israel. It is good for the people of Israel to know the Arab’s representatives in the Knesset and understand without a doubt that they support Hamas, identify with our worst enemies and even if also after terror attacks they deign to condemn outwardly every act of violence, there is no doubt that in their hearts they are partners in the happiness over the killing of Jews.”
The Almagor Terror Victims Association pointed to the violation of law inherent in the attendance of the three Arab MKs at a signing ceremony between Fatah and Hamas arguing that as Hamas is an officially recognized terror organization, anyone participating in an event involving Hamas has automatically violated the law prohibiting attending a meeting of a terror group. “Public support of a unity agreement with a terror organization is the peak of expressing support of the organization and renders useless all attempts by legislators to differentiate between legitimate organizations and organizations that should not exist at all” (Rebecca Anna Stoil ‘MKs: Put sanctions on Arab MKs who went to unity event,’ Jerusalem Post, May 4, 2011).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA has pointed previously to the disturbing cases of disloyalty exhibited by a number of Arab MKs in recent years. Illegal acts, like visiting foreign powers that are in a state of war with Israel, providing intelligence and other sensitive information to neighboring states and terrorist groups harbored within them, and calling for violence against Israel, have all occurred and, unfortunately, passed more often than not unpunished. When three Arab MKs openly attend the signing of a unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas, the later an organization calling for a genocide of the Jews worldwide, this complacency must end.
“It is simply intolerable that these MKs sit in the Knesset while consorting with terrorists. As the Jerusalem Post rightly editorialized on September 12, 2006, ‘A country’s legal code is the glue which keeps its social fabric from fraying and tearing. When that code is contravened, the country’s resolve to uphold its sovereignty is tested. If it fails to implement and enforce its laws, it loses authority. Laws cannot apply only to one segment of the population. Such a situation broadcasts not broadmindedness and magnanimity but vacillation and weakness. It invites further breaches.’”