Israeli Legislator Calls for Executions

I am evil, hear me roar. Raar!

It's nothing new for an Israeli leader to call for the killing of Palestinians, but in this case it is which Palestinians that raises an eyebrow. 

Yisrael Beiteinu [a right-wing Israeli party] Chairman Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday lashed out at Israeli Arab political parties and said he hoped Arab MKs [members of Knesset, Israel's parliament] who had contact with Hamas or did not celebrate Independence Day would be executed.

Israeli Palestinian MKs met with three Hamas legislators in late April as a show of solidarity after Israel revoked their East Jerusalem residency permits because Hamas refused to condemn the most recent suicide bombing. 

Previous calls to charge the MKs with treason emerged immediately after their meetings with Hamas.  But what appeared to send Lieberman over the edge was the MKs' commemoration of the Nakba instead of Israel's Independence Day. 

Why any Palestinian would want to celebrate the independence of an apartheid state where they live as second class citizens instead of remember the simultaneous acts of ethnic cleansing that their people went through at the hands of the new state, and even before, is beyond me.  But it apparently is not beyond Lieberman, for whom, as Israeli Palestinian MK Ahmed Tibi put it best, "fascism has become a way of life and racism a tool of his trade."

Some will be quick to point out that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the Israeli Palestinian MKs against Lieberman.  Though that is the least you would expect, and does not say much, as Olmert is still courting Lieberman's party to join his government.

But when it all comes down to it, if Lieberman really wants to play the "who should be tried at Nuremberg" game, it would be Israeli leaders, past and present, who would be in the docket - and not for just going to a meeting, either. 

It would more likely be for destroying or depopulating more than 530 Palestinian villages in 1948 and forcing 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homes and denying them the right to return, even 58 years later.

Folks like Moshe Dayan, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Moshe Sharett, Chaim Weizman, etc., etc.  You can see what some of these upstanding individuals thought and did over at Palestine Remembered. 

Comments

[Eurosabra]

Lieberman has to up the ante since "Contact with a Foreign Terrorist Organisation" is already a crime under Israeli law, and advocating the lifting of the MKs' parliamentary immunity and their prosecution would be old hat. Proposals of summary execution are one way to look tough AND be innovative.

[Womble]

Lieberman probably had a moment of confusion and had mistaken his present job of a Knesset legislator for one of his previous jobs- that of a bar bouncer.

While the shameless, in-your-face disloyalty of some Arab MKs like Tibi and Bashara is abhorrent, so was Lieberman's rant. Really, how am I supposed to tell Scott off for abusing the Holocaust terminology when a few days later Lieberman goes on record doing the same? ;)

Of course, this post still leaves me room for some Scott bashing for a number of reasons- from plain old factual distortion (Olmert did not court Lieberman's party to join his government at the time of Scott's post) to abuse of inappropriate rhetorics (will you ever quit with this "apartheid" nonsense? Or is it an obligatory part of the ritual Israel bashing you're practicing?).

[scott]

Apartheid:

"The policy or practice of political, legal, economic, or social discrimination, as against the members of a minority group"

Sounds like Israel to me. So yes, I'll continue to use it.

Why would you have loyalty to state that hates you? Where the majority of the population thinks the government should help you leave? Were you loyal to the state you lived in before Israel? Or did you feel more loyalty to your Jewish brothers and sisters? Why is it wrong for the Palestinians to do the same?