The Knesset Plenum on Monday voted not to approve a motion proposed by the House Committee to terminate the membership of MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash-Ta’al).
At the request of MK Oded Forer (Israel Beitenu) and in accordance with section 42a(c) of Basic Law: The Knesset, only 85 MKs supported the motion, versus 11 who opposed it. A majority of 90 MKs were required to pass the motion.
The missing five votes would have come from Yesh Atid and Labor, many of whose members boycotted the vote. Now you know.
House Committee Chair MK Ofir Katz (Likud) told the Plenum before the vote, “The House Committee debated the request for two lengthy meetings, during which the MKs listened carefully to the positions of the Attorney General’s representative and the Knesset legal counsel, heard all the positions, read all the documents laid before them, and weighed the legal positions. The conclusion was unequivocal—signing a petition against the State of Israel constitutes support for the armed struggle of Hamas.
“Ofer Cassif is a supporter of terrorism, a person who praises terrorists and gives legitimacy to harming IDF soldiers and undermines the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Every minute that he serves in Israel’s Knesset is a disgrace to us as a parliament and to us as the State of Israel. The act he committed during a war that is so difficult and painful—an act for the success of which Hamas prayed—is a betrayal of the State of Israel, and is support for a terrorist organization and its goals,” Chairman Katz said.
MK Forer said: “As far as MK Ofer Cassif is concerned, our soldiers are war criminals. From his standpoint, the members of the war cabinet are war criminals. That is why we are here, to say—no more. No one will sit here in Israel’s Knesset in order to act against it.
“Supreme Court Justice Barak said in his opinion at The Hague that if the lawsuit [submitted by South Africa] were to be accepted, then the State of Israel would not be able to defend itself. What we are doing now is defending the State of Israel. MK Ofer Cassif did not even express remorse, although he was given opportunity after opportunity, including this opportunity.
“I want to appeal to the Knesset Members—you were elected to make decisions, and you will have to vote according to what you think, not what someone else will think in the Supreme Court. Vote for the IDF soldiers, vote for our soldiers who are on the front lines now, risking their lives, while someone sits here in the Knesset who claims that they are war criminals while they are defending us,” MK Forer concluded.
MK Cassif said, “This request for termination is based on a blatant lie – that I support the armed struggle of Hamas. Nothing could be further from the truth. No lie is more repulsive than this one. Behind the lie on which the request for termination is based is clear malicious intent – political persecution and the silencing of any critical voice, in general, and particularly that of the Arab citizens and their representatives in the Knesset, with the ultimate goal being their complete exclusion from the public and parliamentary discourse.”
