Three years after the October 7 massacre, terror supporters and a fifth column still sit among our 120 elected representatives. These people exploit free speech to attack victims and soldiers, hoping to continue doing so with full state funding for the next four years. Things need to look different—and the upcoming elections are our chance to fix this.
The debate over disqualifying Ra’am, Hadash, and Sami Abu Shehadeh isn’t just another legal procedure. It’s our national watershed moment. This is where we’ll decide, clearly and definitively, whether the State of Israel will continue funding and legitimizing terror supporters and a fifth column—people working to destroy it from within.
1+These will be the first elections since the October 7 massacre. The excuses are over. This isn’t about “free speech” or “pluralism.” This is cynical, rotten, shameless exploitation of Israeli democracy to grant immunity to terror supporters, stabbing it in the back. Things must look different at the Central Elections Committee, at the Supreme Court—and in the mouths of Arab party members themselves.
Exactly four days after the most barbaric massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, when the bodies of our brothers and sisters hadn’t yet been collected, and the blood in the Gaza border communities hadn’t yet dried, Aida Touma-Sliman of Hadash sits in a TV studio whitewashing the slaughter. In her eyes, those responsible for murdering babies, burning families alive, and mass rape aren’t the vile ‘Palestinian’ murderers—it’s “settler crimes.” That’s exactly how terror supporters talk when they justify bloodshed on live television.
1+Then there’s another one who sees himself as a legitimate public servant. His name is Sami Abu Shehadeh of Balad. This is the man who sought to leverage the October 7 massacre for additional decrees in an op-ed he wrote the day after the disaster. This is the man who dares to demand from us a salary, a car, and a seat in the parliament of the very state he calls to destroy.
If the Supreme Court chooses again to close its eyes and legitimize clear terror supporters at the expense of our murdered victims’ blood, the public must take to the streets. We’ve protested over far less.
We cannot stay silent. We cannot accept this. We cannot get used to people who provide excuses for massacre, support terror, and deny our right to exist. These people’s place is outside the law and outside the state’s borders—certainly not in Israel’s Knesset.