By Ruthie Blum, JNS
The attempt to impeach the Knesset member was an assertion of the duty of a democracy to protect itself from internecine foes who use its freedoms as a weapon.
It didn’t come as a surprise that Knesset member Ayman Odeh, chairman of the predominantly Arab party Hadash-Ta’al, survived the Knesset vote on Monday night to remove him from office. Based on calculations ahead of the actual headcount, everyone was pretty sure he was safe from impeachment.
Though 73 out of a total of 120 lawmakers supported his ouster, the number fell short of the 90-strong supermajority required for such a move. Predictably, those against the measure were all Knesset members from Odeh’s party; Yair Golan’s far-left The Democrats (the merger between Labor and Meretz); and the Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am), headed by Mansour Abbas.
The United Torah Judaism Party’s seven MKs—who later that night quit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and coalition over the controversial Haredi draft bill—boycotted the vote. Added to that were the eight members of Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party and 18 out of the 23 legislators from Yesh Atid, chaired by opposition leader Yair Lapid, who absented themselves.
Shame on every one of them for handing Odeh the victory that provided him with yet another opportunity to bash the Jewish state. You know, by cloaking his malignant attitude in language aimed at duping the woke West and inflaming antisemitism wherever it may roam.
“I’m staying,” he declared defiantly on X. “The despicable, fascist move against me has failed. This time, fascism did not prevail—and more importantly, we will not let it prevail.”
Continuing the distortion, he wrote, “We will stand firm against it and fight for democracy, equality and peace. From here, we must liberate both peoples [Israelis and Palestinians] from the burden of the occupation. Because we were all born free!”
No wonder radical U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an Israel-hating Jew, was so pleased.
“Israel’s far right tried to expel Ayman Odeh, an Arab Israeli opposition leader, from the Knesset because of his opposition to Netanyahu’s war. Today, they failed,” he said on social media. “If Israel is going to be considered a democracy, it cannot expel members of parliament for their political views.”
Talk about two peas in a deceptive, agenda-driven pod. After all, the notion that Odeh and Sanders are concerned about Israeli democracy—or any democracy at all, for that matter—is laughable.
This isn’t to say that the issue is funny, however. On the contrary, Odeh is a dangerous figure who has no business sitting in the Knesset, regardless of the constituents who put him there through the ballot box. Siding with the enemy, which he has done repeatedly and proudly, warrants disqualification from political office, if not a prison sentence.
The following are a few examples that illustrate a pattern of incitement on Odeh’s part and his identification with terrorism against fellow Israeli citizens—Jewish ones, that is.
During an anti-war protest in Haifa two months ago, he celebrated Hamas’s resilience, bellowing, “After 600 days, there is an overwhelming majority among both peoples saying: ‘If only these 20 months had never happened.’ This is a historic defeat for the right, which was defeated in Gaza. Gaza won and Gaza will win.”
Make no mistake: This constituted cheerleading for the monsters who raped, beheaded, burned and kidnapped Israeli men, women and children on Oct. 7, 2023. The same barbarians who’ve been using the hostages as leverage to remain in power to repeat the atrocities “again and again and again.”
Following a hostage-release/ceasefire deal in January, he tweeted, “I am happy for the release of the hostages and prisoners ... both peoples must be freed from the yoke of occupation.”
Note the moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims, in addition to the accusation that both are shackled by Israel.
In November 2024, Odeh delivered an odious speech from the Knesset podium, citing Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry lies about the death of newborns in the Strip, while calling Netanyahu a “serial killer of peace.” Hurling epithets at Netanyahu was a classic neat trick to pretend that he was blaming the prime minister, rather than the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli populace, for non-existent crimes.
Naturally, he made no mention of the Israeli babies slaughtered—or fetus cut out of its mother’s womb—during the Oct. 7 massacre. Nor did he talk about the abducted Bibas family: Yarden, who was torn away from his wife, Shiri, and the couple’s two sons, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kfir.
Odeh had nothing to say when Yarden Bibas was released on Feb. 1 as part of a deal, only to learn less than three weeks later that Shiri and the kids had been executed by their captors in demonic fashion. To add to the trauma of the grieving widower and bereaved father, one of the three bodies that Hamas returned to Israel on Feb. 20 turned out not to be his wife’s. About this extra cruelty, which was only rectified the following day, Odeh also remained silent.
Anyone who wants to believe that the source of Odeh’s wrath is Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition is living in an alternate universe. His sedition goes way back, as it targets Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
Take, for instance, his call on Arab-Israeli police officers in April 2022 to “lay down your weapons ... don’t enlist with the occupation.” In other words: abandon your posts. Resign from Israel’s defense. Join the resistance. And that was during Lapid’s premiership, with a coalition that included the United Arab List.
And let’s not forget Odeh’s condemnation of the Abraham Accords. He said in October 2020—a month after they were signed on the White House lawn—that Israel’s normalization with the Gulf states is based on “twisted logic” that [the then-Joint List of Arab parties he headed] cannot accept ... either morally or nationally.”
According to Amendment 44 of Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset (“The MK Expulsion Law”), passed in 2016, an MK can be expelled if the Knesset finds that his or her actions amounted to incitement to racism or support of an armed struggle against the state. The rationale behind the 90-vote supermajority rule was to protect minority voices from being silenced over political disagreements.
It’s a worthy principle that’s been obfuscated in Odeh’s case. The proposed bill to banish him from the Knesset wasn’t about his dissenting views. It was a genuine attempt to safeguard Israel’s national security, particularly in the midst of a war, from a politician who uses his platform as a megaphone on behalf of the other side.
This process wasn’t antithetical to democracy. It was an assertion of the duty of a democracy to protect itself from destruction at the hands of internecine foes who use its freedoms as a weapon.
Unfortunately, Odeh emerged unscathed, perhaps even strengthened in the eyes of champions like Sanders and Hamas. Still, having his offenses under the spotlight was a step in the right direction for the rest of us.
