Dozens protest Zionist Union event in Arab community

Around 40 people demonstrated Saturday against Zionist Union leaders holding a campaign event in the predominantly Arab Wadi Ara area in the Galilee, near the northern city of Haifa. Several demonstrators scuffled with police at the scene, and three were arrested.

Zionist Union chiefs Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni were in Wadi Ara for an election event along with Zouheir Bahloul, a prominent Arab Israeli sportscaster and journalist who is 17th on the center-left party’s Knesset slate.

But the protesters, resenting the presence of the political party and its attempt to attract Arab voters, chanted slogans and held placards accusing the Labor-Hatnua union of being complicit in alleged crimes against Palestinian civilians.

“Murderers! How many children in Gaza have you killed to this day?” they chanted. Others waved Palestinian flags and called for a boycott of the elections.

According to Ynet, some demonstrators spat on several participants attending the event.

“We don’t want anyone from the Zionist Union coming here,” a protester told the news site. “They are partners in the murder of the Palestinian people.”

The area in which the event took place, known as “The Triangle,” is heavily populated with Arab Israeli citizens. The Labor Party, which makes up the larger part of the Zionist Union, has previously used its progressive social policies to attract disillusioned Arab Israeli voters — one of the country’s most impoverished demographics, who make up 20 percent of the electorate but have some of the lowest rates of voter participation in the country.

“Unfortunately, we see Arab citizens supporting the ‘Racist Union’ that continues to act against the Palestinian people and the Arab sector,” one protester said. “We urge all those who support them to leave (them) and think of better ways to contribute politically.”

Authorities shut down the protest, citing a lack of a demonstration permit. Three people who clashed with officers were arrested.

Livni addressed the ruckus outside the event, insisting her party was a positive force for equality.

“The only ones that will bring equality and progress in the negotiations (with the Palestinians) are those who believe that all people are equal,” she said. “We have the ability to maintain the State of Israel as a Jewish state in which all citizens have equal rights. This is not a favor we are doing for Israeli Arabs, but a value we believe in.”

Meanwhile Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman said the incident was further proof that “some Israeli Arabs are not just enemies of the Zionist Union but enemies of Zionism.”

Liberman has often called for a land swap that would see the Arab towns of the Triangle become part of a Palestinian in any future peace deal.

In Nazareth on Saturday hundreds of people demonstrated against a decision by the High Court of Justice to allow Liberman to distribute free copies of the provocative French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Israel.

The court had overturned a ban by the Central Elections Committee, with the judges saying distributing the magazine was “legitimate election propaganda” and did not constitute a prohibited gift, as the elections committee had argued.

Participants in Saturday’s rally, organized by Israel’s Islamic Movement, claimed the decision was disrespectful on issues sacred to Islam. Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam said offending the Prophet Muhammad was a red line for Arabs and called on the government to apologize for the affront.

Liberman had ordered his party activists to buy up and hand out copies of the “survivors’ issue” of the satirical magazine, featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, after a local bookstore backed out of selling it at the last minute.

The issue was released amid an international wave of support for the French weekly in the wake of a terror attack on its editorial offices in Paris that left 12 people dead.

Charlie Hebdo has in the past angered some Muslims by printing caricatures of Muhammad. The issue released in mid-January drew widespread protests across the Muslim world, including in Gaza.

AFP contributed to this report.