By Prof Avi Bell, ISRAEL HAYOM
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to launch a criminal investigation into the actions of Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi for incitement. The request comes on the heels of Zoabi’s interview with a Hamas-affiliated newspaper in which she implored Muslims to give terrorists “popular support.”
Zoabi has been skating on thin legal ice for a while. Her statements often imply that she believes terrorists are fighting for their country and the end justifies the means, and that their victims — Jews — are Zionist occupiers who have no right to life.
Should the attorney general grant Netanyahu’s request, it would not be the first time Zoabi faces an incitement investigation. In January, Weinstein decided to press criminal charges against her over a remark she made in June 2014, saying that the abductors and murderers of Israeli teens Gil-ad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frenkel were “not terrorists.”
Zoabi struck a plea bargain by which she paid a minor fine, and her troubles went away. Soon after that, Weinstein closed a different case against her, also for incitement, citing insufficient evidence.
When it comes to incitement investigations and indictments, the main legal hurdle lies with the very definition of “incitement” in Israel’s legal code.
Being a democracy that cherishes freedom of speech, the judiciary’s definition of incitement is very narrow. Unfortunately, and undemocratically, over the past few years the judicial interpretation of this offense has been more severe in cases involving Jewish defendants from the Right than it has in cases involving Jewish defendants from the Left.
To secure a conviction in incitement cases, the law requires not only proof that statements supporting violence were made, but also proof that such statements are directly linked to an act of violence. For this reason, there is no way to predict whether Zoabi, even if indicted, will be convicted.
The real question, however, goes beyond whether Zoabi should be indicted. The question is how she has been allowed to retain her Knesset seat and her Israeli citizenship.
Zoabi was first elected to the Knesset in 2009 as part of the Balad party, founded by Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel in 2007 when a criminal investigation was launched against him over alleged espionage for Hezbollah.
She participated in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla, which tried to breach the legal maritime blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, effectively participating in an act of war against the State of Israel.
The Knesset’s Ethics Committee suspended Zoabi for six months, but Weinstein refused to indict her for her participation in the flotilla, and then-Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin prevented a vote on a motion to revoke her parliamentary immunity, which would have paved the way for a criminal indictment, as well as potentially revoking her citizenship.
The Central Elections Committee disqualified the belligerent MK from vying for a Knesset seat during elections twice, but both times the Supreme Court overturned the decision.
It is too early to tell what will become of the current incitement investigation against Zoabi, but it is clear the tolerance shown for her actions is undermining the state’s ability to generate deterrence against those who incite
Time to throw the
bookhand grenade at Zoabi.At which precise moment in time did executing traitors become obsolete?
Zoabi exists still within our top echelons because our so called justice system is terminally corrupt in favor of the enemy. I doubt very much that she will be removed at all.
We have been misled into accepting a system that detains, and jails w/o trial Jewish young leaders, (administrative detentions), exiles from their homes other Jews and destroys systematically Jewish villages, homes, farms etc.
It does no take the proverbial rocket scientist to understand that such putrid system will naturally provide cover to virulent enemies of ours. Zoabi is one of them.
Solution?
That is well known already.