MK Itzik Shmuli (Labor) blasted MK Hanin Zoabi on Sunday night, after she said that IDF soldiers are “worse terrorists than ISIS.” While ISIS members “kill one person each time with their knife, the IDF [kills] tens of Palestinians with one button,” she said.
In a post on his Facebook page, Shmuli used unusually harsh language to condemn Zoabi, suggesting that the controversial MK “shut up”.
“Yes, I know…it’s all within the framework of freedom of speech, but it’s really about time that she just shut up,” wrote Shmuli.
“There is nothing here but a provocation and certainly not a legitimate argument between right and left, but a fundamentalist hater of Israel who knows how to fully take advantage of Israeli democracy,” he added.
Zoabi, who is known for her history of anti-Israel statements and actions, created a new firestorm with the latest remarks, with MKs from all sides of the spectrum condemning her.
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) noted that Zoabi’s provocation was made just as an Arab soccer team honored the founder of the Balad party, Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel after he was found to have committed treason.
“While Bishara the traitor receives a certificate of appreciation in Sakhnin, his protégé Zoabi calls the IDF an army of murderers, who are worse terrorists than ISIS, and incites young people not to enlist to the IDF,” wrote Katz on Facebook.
“There is a clear action of libel, treason and subversion here,” he said. “In the next government session, I will demand that the legal establishment be instructed to find a legal way to distance her from the Knesset and immediately exile her from Israel. There is a limit to what a sovereign state and citizens can and should absorb from a traitor with a diploma.”
MK Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beytenu) said Sunday night that legislation to strip Zoabi of her Israeli citizenship would soon be introduced.
Ilatov said that his proposal has the votes needed to throw Zoabi out of Israeli society altogether. “Zoabi continues to ally herself with Israel’s enemies,” he said.
Zoabi is infamous for her provocative, anti-Israel speeches, including one in which she said that Israel has “no right to a normal life” and a later address claiming that “the Israeli occupation” was behind the murder of Israelis in Bulgaria.
On another occasion, she declared that Israel should “thank her” for allowing Jews to live in the Jewish State.
More recently, Zoabi wrote an article encouraging Hamas on the terror group’s website, and was briefly handcuffed during violent pro-Palestinian protests in Haifa.