The Hadash and Ta’al parties are “terrorists in suits,” said far-right Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked on Thursday. Shaked made the statement in a comment on a video released by the two parties as part of their election campaign.
“When we see the riots and clashes in east Jerusalem and then this anti-Israel video, everything comes together. Hadash and Ta’al are terrorists in suits who incite Israeli Arabs against the government and against the state. They have no place in the Israeli Knesset,” she tweeted. Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman tweeted in response: “Says the one who smiles at fascism.”
A video from the Shaked electoral campaign in 2019: She picks up a bottle of perfume labeled “fascism,” and sprays herself with it, and says to the camera: “Smells like democracy to me.”
In response, Hadash-Ta’al released a statement charging that Shaked, dogged by bad polling, is “joining the incitement contest against Arab society and its representatives in order to win a few more votes from the right,” and accused her of being a “terrorist against equality, democracy, and peace.“
In its video, Hadash-Ta’al said “hands off Shuafat [refugees camp near occupied East Jerusalem]” and that “the occupation is putting up a siege and is killing [people].” “The occupation will fail,” the Hadash-Ta’al campaign video continued. “The will of our Palestinian people will be victorious through freedo. Lapid and his accomplices are murderers and dancing on blood. As they failed in Gaza, they will fail in Shuafat,” the video said.
Hadash-Ta’al leader Ayman Odeh sent to Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday a formal complaint written to on Knesset letterhead regarding the heavy arrests and restrictions on movement imposed upon the residents of Shuafat. “That’s what the occupation looks like. The occupation has victims. There’s a solution to this suffering and oppression: ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state,” he said. MK Touma-Sliman, defined Israel’s actions in Shuafat as “a draconian collective punishment” in a tweet on Wednesday. Touma-Sliman went after members of the Knesset currently sitting in the coalition government. “Once again, [Yair] Lapid, [Shaked, Gantz, suggest killing, siege tactics, and home demolitions, but only ending the occupation will bring real security.”
In that letter, Odeh also deplored the state of general paralysis in the area, saying that “3,000 patients are being denied exit to receive medical care; medical crews are being denied entry to the neighborhood for the purpose of medical care; ambulance and firefighting crews are being denied entry to assist residents.” “There is a lack of basic foodstuffs. As a result of the difficult situation in the neighborhood, schools have shut down, fearing for the life and health of students,” he added.
Odeh claimed that arrests were “accompanied by heavy raids by security forces and massive use of violence and teargas, which is incomprehensible against innocent persons.”
Source: Communist Party of Israel