An eighth front, a fifth column
Today, while Israel was still involved in hostilities in both Iran and Gaza, the Knesset took up the case for throwing Ayman Odeh "the terrorist" out of the House
The Knesset House Committee today opened deliberations on a request to expel Knesset Member Ayman Odeh from the parliament. Odeh, a 10-year veteran of the parliament, is chairman of the Hadash-Ta’al list, which was formed following the split in the Joint List of Arab parties prior to the November 2022 election.
The request is based on the 2016 “Expulsion Law,” which allows for the removal of an MK from the House if three-quarters of its 120 members agree that he or she has committed one or both of the following violations: incitement to racism or advocacy of an armed struggle against the State of Israel.
The evidence of Odeh’s subversion is a single tweet on X this past January 19, cited by Likud MK Avihai Boaron in submitting his request. In response to the announcement by Israel and Hamas that they had agreed on both a cease-fire and on an exchange, respectively, of Palestinian security prisoners and Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Odeh wrote that he was “Happy about the release of the kidnapped and the prisoners. From here we must free both peoples from the yoke of occupation. We were all born free.”
(The cease-fire, and the exchanges, it will be recalled, ended on the night of March 18, when Israel renewed hostilities with a series of bombing attacks on Gaza.)
For the motion to be presented to the full Knesset, three-quarters of committee’s 17 members must vote for expulsion; the same proportion of the full plenum must vote in the same way.
One must strain the imagination to envision what about those three sentences constituted either an expression of racism or of support for armed struggle against the state. An examination of the statements made at today’s committee by those supporting the motion against Odeh suggests that that they were offended by the implied parallel he made between the Israeli hostages in Gaza and the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons on security convictions.
According to House Committee head Ofir Katz, of Likud, Odeh is an “arch-terrorist,” part of the “eighth front” on which Israel has been defending itself since October 7 — with the first seven fronts being Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Iraq. The eighth front, by this reasoning, is presented by the enemy at home, Israel’s Arab citizenry.
MK Simon Davidson, of the “centrist” Yesh Atid party (led by Yair Lapid), explained at the hearing that Odeh had asked him to withdraw his declared support for the motion to expel him, but that “when I hear a Knesset member compare [an Israeli] captive to a [Palestinian] prisoner, I am shocked.” He explained that his Holocaust-survivor mother cried on October 7 and said that “this is what they did to her parents.” He is not a racist, he declared, and he wanted it known that he believes in “taking care of the needs of every Arab child” (presumably that doesn’t include those who lived in and died in Gaza over the past two years).
The statements made by other House Committee members affiliated with the governing coalition were far stronger in their condemnation of Odeh the “terrorist,” but Davidson’s confusing, emotional explanation for his position is a pretty good example of where even much of the middle-of-the-road Jewish population is at today: in a place that is unable to imagine the dilemma in which most Arab citizens of Israel have found themselves since October 7, torn between their loyalty to the state (yes, their loyalty) and their Palestinian identity and pride. A place that is unable to feel sympathy for both Israelis and Palestinians at the same time, that can no longer imagine the two peoples living together in peace, but also can’t imagine them separating in peace. That is a perception of the reality we live in that is so skewed that it is incapable of seeing the moral problem in the ferociousness of the campaign undertaken by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Nor can it condone any expression of identification with the people of Gaza by their brethren within Israel: such identification is tantamount to being a supporter of terror.
MK Ayman Odeh heads a party most of whose members are Arabs, but which welcomes Jews who believe in equal rights for all Israelis. He has been in conflict with MK Mansour Abbas, chairman of the Islamist Ra’am party, because the latter was willing to join the “government of change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, even though that government did not call for an end to the occupation. Odeh believes that the occupation is the most critical issue facing Israel today, and he is unwilling to sweep it under the carpet even if it would be politically advantageous to do so.
(For more background about Ayman Odeh, this is an article I published in early 2024 about Odeh, several months after the start of the Gaza war.)
You can disagree with Odeh; most Arab voters tell pollsters that they do. They want their politicians to be in the next government, and to focus on improving the material conditions of Arab society. So, it’s not surprising that nearly two years ago, Odeh declared that when the next election is called, he will step down from electoral politics, and devote himself to activity on the civil front intended to advance Jewish-Arab cooperation to end the occupation.
But from Odeh’s insistence on equality for all Israeli citizens, and on a two-state solution that would lead to an end of Israel’s military occupation of the territories, to support for terrorism is a factual and logical leap that would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so dangerously distorted, so counter-productive, so willfully mendacious.
The Knesset House Committee will meet again next Tuesday to continue its deliberations and then vote on the motion to expel MK Ayman Odeh. Based on the statements voiced at today’s hearing, their decision could well lead to a vote on the question in the full Knesset. If it ultimately votes to expel Odeh, it would be a terrible loss not only for Israel’s Arab citizens, but for Israel’s shaky democracy as a whole.
Utter hypocrisy given the racism uttered by the Israeli Jewish rightwingers.