Cabel: No room in Labor for MK who said attacks on soldiers aren’t terror

Leading Zionist Union/Labor MK Eitan Cabel on Saturday became the latest lawmaker to condemn a fellow party legislator for saying that a Palestinian who attempts to stab an Israeli soldier is not a terrorist, unlike those who attack civilians.

“There is no place for [Zouheir] Bahloul in Labor,” Cabel, a former secretary-general of the party and the current head of the Knesset Economics Committee, told a cultural event in Yokne’am, Army Radio reported.

“I would like to say that he made a slip of the tongue, but to my regret this is apparently his opinion. He knew that remarks of this nature would harm the Zionist Union faction, which adds insult to injury,” Cabel said.

Labor is the greater partner in the Zionist Union, which was formed when Labor united with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party ahead of the March 2015 Knesset elections.

Freshman Arab Israeli MK Bahloul, a former sports broadcaster and journalist, made the comments on Thursday in reference to the stabbing attack last month in which a soldier shot a disarmed Palestinian assailant in the head. The incident made international headlines and sparked a national debate after a video of the incident emerged. The soldier, whose identity is under a gag order, now faces manslaughter charges, and is being held on an IDF base.

The Zionist Union immediately sought to distance itself from comments, saying the remarks was not indicative of the party’s platform. Party leader Isaac Herzog wrote Thursday on Twitter that he had told Bahloul he “rejects and strongly condemns his statements, and that the position of the Zionist Union is a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist.”

The party itself said that the “terrorist from Hebron was like any other terrorist” and that Bahloul’s comments “did not reflect or represent the position of the party.”

“We are in the midst of a wave of terror and the government should start acting against this wave productively,” the statement read.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also took to social media to harshly criticize the lawmaker on Thursday, calling his comments “shameful” in a Hebrew post on Facebook.

“IDF soldiers protect us with their bodies from bloodthirsty murderers. I expect all Israeli citizens, and members of Knesset in particular, to give them their full support,” the prime minister wrote.

In his comments Thursday to Army Radio, Bahloul said the “word ‘terrorist’ has become all-inclusive,” and that every Palestinian was now suspected of being a potential terrorist.

“All those who struggle for their freedom and independence are considered terrorists by Israelis,” he said.

The MK did, however, make a distinction between Palestinians who attack civilians and those who attack soldiers.

“I agree that a person who takes the lives of members of a whole family is a terrorist. They are terrorists and murderers who deserve punishment,” Bahloul said.

But “those who attack families in their sleep [such as the case of the Fogel family of Itamar in 2011, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered both parents and three children, including a three-month old baby] cannot be considered terrorists if they attack an IDF position,” he said.