Racism and the Vote to Expel MK Aiman Odeh
When I hear a generalization about a group and its members, I mentally substitute the word “Jews” to test it for racism. For example, on election day in 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud, the largest party in a country that describes itself “the only democracy in the Middle East,” urged his supporters to go out and vote, as “The Arabs are heading to the polls in droves.”
Imagine if a leader of a country with a large Jewish poulation, say Britain or Argentina, would have warned about Jewish voter turnout, or if Netanyahu had sounded a similar alarm about immigrants from the former Soviet Union or ultra-Orthodox Jews, as if these groups were not legitimate, integral parts of the Israeli public. Any sweeping generalization about a minority population is dangerous. Coming from a prime minister and aimed at one-fifth of Israel’s citizens, it was especially problematic.
Some will bristle: How dare you compare? Jews are loyal citizens everywhere. Anti-Semitic conspiracies and accusations like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are lies! Lies, indeed. Just like the claim that Arabs were voting “in droves.”
Don’t take my word for it. Take Amit Segal’s. A year after that election, the prominent political commentator, who is considered close to Netanyahu, published an article titled “How Netanyahu Won the Elections.” He revealed that while Likud headquarters knew that Arab turnout was sliggish, text messages to voters declared the opposite.
Segal wrote: “Voter turnout is three times higher in the Arab sector,”, said one message. “The Arab residents of Be’er Sheva are voting en masse, don’t let them appoint the next government ministers,” read another. “Ehud Yaari on Channel 2: Hamas is now calling on Arabs in Israel to go out and vote.” … In the previous elections, 230,000 people voted between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. In 2015, almost 600,000 people headed to the polls in droves during those hours, most of them Likud voters”.
Segal laid out how data was fabricated and weaponized in order to paint a nightmare scenario around Arab participation in a democratic election. After his win, Netanyahu convened representatives of Arab and other minority groups, mainly Likud supporters, and apologized. He hadn’t meant all Arabs, just those voting for the Joint List.
Ayman Odeh, then-chairman of the Joint List, now faces expulsion from the Knesset, the first possible use of a 2016 law that allows the removal of an elected member for incitement to racism or support for armed struggle against Israel.
This is not the place to debate broad issues like freedom of speech. Rather, I urge Members of Knesset who are preparing to vote on Odeh’s fate to apply the “Group Name Test.”
Imagine a country where racism and verbal violence are rising, where lawmakers embrace destruction, dream aloud of expulsion, and praise violent settlers. Now imagine that in that country, parliament focuses on a single remark by a Jewish legislator, one that could be interpreted in more than one way, and builds a case to expel him. Only him. The Jew. Others are left untouched.
Dear MKs: what kind of parliament would that be? In what kind of country would that happen? The push to oust Ayman Odeh is not about his future. rather, it is a referendum on the future of Israel. And on its soul.