MK Moshe Feiglin: Zoabi Will not be Disqualified from Knesset Due to Israeli Identity Crisis

In a television interview on Channel 2 on Wednesday, MK Moshe Feiglin made the following comments:

In order to expel Arab MK Hanin Zoabi from the Knesset, all that Israel really needs is a basic survival instinct. No parliament in the world would keep a member who openly identifies with the enemy in its ranks – certainly not during a war. For that reason, when our IDF soldiers were fighting in Gaza while I chaired the Knesset sessions and Arab MKs called our soldiers ‘murderers’, I expelled them from the plenum, one after the other.

But in Israel, Hanin Zoabi and her ilk will never be disqualified, despite the Knesset Basic Law that clearly requires this: “A party list will not participate in elections for the Knesset and a person will not be a candidate for the Knesset if the goals or action of the party or the person, explicitly or implicitly negate the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

According to the wording of the law, MK Zoabi – and perhaps all the Arab MKs – should be disqualified from serving in the Knesset. All the Arab MKs define themselves as ‘Palestinians’.  This is because they do not accept Israeli identity, which implies that the State of Israel is the Jewish nation state. The Arab MKs break the Knesset law both explicitly and implicitly.

There is another side to this coin. Every observant Jewish MK can apparently also be disqualified. When they say in their prayers, “You have chosen us from among all the nations…” those MKs are actually declaring that they do not accept (at least implicitly) the first principle of democracy: the principle of equality.

But the High Court interprets the “Jewish” state in its most narrow sense, while it interprets the “democratic” state in its broadest sense. As a result, only Jewish candidates can be disqualified from running for the Knesset. The deeper reason for this is because the Israeli who denies his Judaism needs the Arab to allow him to forget that he is a Jew…

“You should thank me for being willing to be a member of your Knesset,” said Hanin Zoabi. She has a point.

If the Arabs do not agree to participate in Israel’s parliament, we will have a Knesset made up solely of Jews. Once again we will be alone. It will become clear that only a Jew can be an Israeli and our separate, Jewish identity will once again slap us in the face. All the normalcy that we attempted to create here, the ‘nation like all the other nations’ mentality to which we attempted to flee, will collapse all at once.

The Israeli needs the Arab to help him forget that he is a Jew.

It’s a good thing Zoabi agrees to be in the Knesset…