MK Hanin Zoubi says not intimidated by Israeli incitement

The Israeli incitement campaign against Arab MK, Hanin Zoubi has escalated from threats, condemnations and intimidations to police complaints on charges of “incitement to violence and murder” after she refused, over the past few days to consider the disappearance of three settlers in the West Bank a terrorist attack, contrary to the positions of some Arab MKs.

The racist incitement campaign against Zoubi started on Tuesday by several Israeli ministers and Knesset members including Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman who said that Hanin Zoubi “should have similar fate to the kidnappers’ fate.”

The Israeli police announced that dozens of Israelis filed on Wednesday individual complaints against the MK of the National Democratic Assembly.

Israel’s Culture Minister, Limor Livnat, announced earlier that she would ask the Attorney General to officially investigate Zoubi in accordance with Article 144 of the “Prevention of Terrorism” law.

Meanwhile, deputy Prime Minister Ophir Akonis said that Zoubi’s statements stress on the need to re-examine the possibility of removing her from the Knesset and preventing her from running in the future.

Dozens of members of the Israeli right-wing tried on Tuesday to reach Zoubi’s house in Nazareth to deliver her an “expulsion order from the land of Israel, on behalf of the Jewish people.”

Zoubi said in an exclusive interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper that racist incitement campaigns do not intimidate her and will not force her to retreat from her position that the operation is “not a terrorist attack”, saying the perpetrators “have carried out the operation because they did not have any alternative to change the status of the Palestinian people, under the Israeli occupation policies”.

Zoubi said “the reckless incitement campaign confirms that the Israelis do not understand what I’m saying. In the eyes of the Israeli society, the Palestinian struggle including, stone-throwing, uprising, boycott and peaceful popular uprising is terrorism”.

Zoubi remarked on pressures exerted against her to condemn the kidnapping of three settlers in Hebron, saying “to describe the struggle of the Palestinian people against the occupation as terrorism is Netanyahu’s speech, not mine. These are the occupier and colonizer words and not the words of those living under occupation”.

Zoubi stressed on the need to emphasize that “in the midst of national liberation, those occupied resort to tools and means that I do not agree with, but they should always be placed within their liberation context as part of people’s struggle to legitimately resist the occupation, and to strive for their freedom and independence”.

Zoubi was forced to change her private number, after the Israeli right disclosed her number and showered her with threats.

The Knesset security apparatus announced that she will be placed under protection, which Zoubi says “proves that the police have real information about those who threaten my life, but does not investigate the information and arrest the perpetrators”.