Arab MK calls Liberman the ‘Jewish Islamic State’

An Arab Israeli Knesset member called Israel’s foreign minister the “Jewish Islamic State” after Avigdor Liberman said that Arab citizens who betray the country should be beheaded.

Ahmad Tibi, the head of the Arab Movement for Change (Ta’al) party, on Monday responded to remarks made the previous day by Liberman in Herzliya.

Tibi said the (Arab) Joint List, the united part to which he belongs, “will remove racists’ and fascists’ heads only through democratic means – bringing as many [Knesset] seats as possible and active participation in the election. The stronger we are, the weaker Jewish IS will be.”

“Minister Liberman’s talk of ‘beheading’ Arab Israelis necessitates the opening of an investigation,” Tibi said during a speech to Arab Israeli students at the Arab American University — Jenin.

Speaking at an elections event at the IDC, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya on Sunday, the head of the nationalist Yisrael Beytenu party said that those [Arabs] who support Israel “should receive everything [in terms of rights]; those against us, it cannot be helped, we must lift up an ax and behead them — otherwise we will not survive here.”

The foreign minister also said that Umm al-Fahm, a large Arab town in the center, should be part of a future Palestinian state and not of Israel.

“Arab Israelis who want the destruction of Israel are a fifth column. They shouldn’t get state benefits,” said Liberman.

“Israeli citizens who raise a black flag on Nakba Day [on which Palestinians mourn the establishment of Israel] — from my perspective, they should leave here, and I would willingly and with great pleasure hand them over to [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas,” he added, alluding to his plan for land swaps in the event of a future Palestinian state, which he has argued should absorb Arab Israelis.

On Monday, several diplomats, including Israel’s former ambassadors to South Africa and France, also condemned Liberman’s comments.

“Israel’s No. 1 diplomat is waving an axe over the heads of citizens of the country that he represents, and in the same breath he preaches to the whole world about fighting anti-Semitism,” the diplomats said, according to The Jerusalem Post.