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Implementation of Rabbi Kahane’s Ideology: Bar Arab Candidates and Skew Elections

>> Read the full Position Paper

>> Read the Report: Pseudo Democracy: State of the Regime in Israel

The proposal to amend Basic Law: The Knesset (Expanding Grounds for Barring Participation in Elections), submitted by Coalition Chairman MK Ofir Katz (Likud) as a private bill and approved in preliminary reading on 30 October 2024, constitutes an integral part of the regime revolution that has not stopped for a second, despite the war.

Already in June 2022, in its report Pseudo Democracy, Zulat warned that the State of Israel might slide toward an authoritarian regime, among other things, due to the steps to push its Arab citizens and their representatives out of the political arena.

Existing legislation already stipulates that a list of candidates/a person shall not participate or be a candidate in Knesset elections, if the goals or actions of the list/person, including their utterances, explicitly or implicitly negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or support an armed struggle against it by an enemy state or a terrorist organization.

Nevertheless, the private bill submitted by MK Katz has far-reaching implications:

  • The broad provisions of the bill severely and disproportionately violate the right to equality, freedom of expression, and freedom of association, and especially the right to vote and the right to be elected, which are considered fundamental rights in a democratic regime. Thus, the bill seeks to emasculate the Supreme Court’s clear and consistent rulings, whereby law provisions restricting the right to be elected must be interpreted narrowly lest fundamental civil rights should be excessively circumscribed.
  • It implements the ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who viewed Israeli citizens belonging to the Arab minority and its representatives in the Knesset as Israel’s “most dangerous enemies,” a position shared by senior figures in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right coalition.
  • It constitutes abuse of power by the government and the coalition-majority Knesset to skew the elections and impede the establishment of an alternative to the far-right coalition that has been ruling the country since January 2023, coming on the heels of a similar effort in 2014 that saw the electoral threshold raised.
  • It reflects the acceleration of a long-standing process to disqualify members of Knesset, candidates, and lists representing the Arab minority. Even if no candidate or list is ultimately disqualified, the proposal still serves the campaign to delegitimize political cooperation in the Knesset with representatives of the country’s Arab citizens.
  • It is part of a series of racist laws designed to send a message to Arabs, who constitute 20% of the country’s population, that at best they are second-class citizens in the State of Israel.

The bill underscores the connection between the regime revolution advanced by the current government and the ideology of Jewish supremacy, which is rooted in the persecution and exclusion of Israel’s Arab citizens. Not coincidentally, the practical meaning of the proposed legislation is that it “kills two birds with one stone”: it targets only Arab lists and candidates and it perpetuates the rule of Binyamin Netanyahu and the Far Right.

הצבעה

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.