Arabs ‘are here by mistake, because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job,’ far-right leader tells lawmakers

Read More

Far-right Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich told Arab lawmakers Wednesday that they “are here by mistake – because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948,” in his most recent tirade against Arab Knesset members.

Smotrich made the remarks during a Knesset discussion on an immigration bill which Simcha Rothman – an MK from his party – tried to promote. He also called Arab lawmakers “terror supporters” and “enemies.”

In response, Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman charged on Twitter: “We are putting up with this filthy fascism every day at the Knesset.”

“But don’t think about us, think about how every Arab citizen in Israel feels when such things are said offhandedly in parliament, how a young Arab feels when the right threatens to start a second Nakba,” she added, referring to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, led the country during its War of Independence, when many Palestinians were either driven away or fled. Some of their decedents, numbering in the millions, still live in refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and in neighboring Arab countries.

The face of Israel’s far right wants to ‘abort’ Palestinian hope

Israel needs antibodies against anti-LGBT Smotrich

‘The left made Israel more moral, but their mistakes made them irrelevant’

Smotrich, who has been accused of racism several times, said in April that “Arabs are citizens of Israel, for now at least, and they have representatives at the Knesset, for now at least” at his party’s faction meeting. He has voiced vehement opposition to the United Arab List’s inclusion in Israel’s governing coalition.

Earlier in April, Smotrich also took to Twitter to argue “a true Muslim must know the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people,” telling Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi that “Arabs like you, who don’t recognize that, will not remain here.”