MK Hanin Zoabi: Israel’s 'political culture' has moved 'towards fascist values'

Hanin Zoabi, a Member of Knesset as part of the Joint List, currently suspended for four months, has described Israel as entering a “new era”, with a “clear deterioration towards fascist values.”

Zoabi, a long-time activist and politician for the Balad party, was speaking to journalist Ben White for an article published today by Middle East Monitor.

Along with her Knesset colleagues Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka, Zoabi recently met with the families of Palestinian assailants whose bodies are being withheld by Israel authorities.

The visit was part of “a campaign being conducted by the families and legal aid and human rights groups seeking the return of the bodies of their family members.” But following public and political outrage, the Knesset Ethics Committee sanctioned all three MKs.

Speaking to White, Zoabi said that underlying the recent events and incitement against Palestinian MKs is “a clear deterioration towards fascist values”, adding: “it is not just a matter of ministers, but of a political culture.”

Zoabi pointed to surveys which she said show a growing distance from democratic values amongst Jewish Israeli youth. “Rather than seeing democracy as equality and human rights, now the only meaning of democracy in Israel is the rule of the – Jewish – majority.”

According to the Nazareth-based parliamentarian, “it is time to talk about a new Israel”, where ‘Jewish and democratic’ is merely a “slogan”, not a “well formulated discourse.”

Balad has always said that Israel can be either Jewish or democratic. Now there is a recognition of this within the Israeli elite, and the public. But it is not a dilemma; they have decided, and they are justifying their decision to have a Jewish state.

Zoabi identified three reasons for this trend. First, Israel’s founding definition as a ‘Jewish state’, and the rejection or denial of Palestinians as an indigenous population. Second, the “vanishing of a political alternative”, and the emergence of a “consensus having a debate within itself.”

Third, Zoabi points to “the self-confidence” of Palestinian citizens themselves.

[BLOCK]If you are weak, with no demands for democracy or the pride of the indigenous, then they are happy to be racist towards you in a liberal way. Now they feel we are getting more powerful as citizens, with political and civic awareness, and so to oppress us, they will need to be harsher.[BLOCK]

The parliamentarian stressed that “our struggle is a democratic struggle” – and is thus also “a national struggle”, as a true democracy cannot “suppress our national identity.”