Knesset panel suspends Hadash-Ta’al MK Cassif for two months over wartime criticism

Hadash-Ta’al lawmaker Ofer Cassif was handed a two-month suspension from parliamentary activity Wednesday by the Knesset Ethics Committee after lawmakers complained about his criticism of Israeli troops fighting against Hamas in Gaza.

The committee said it barred Cassif from plenum sessions and committee meetings from October 19 to December 19, and docked his pay for two weeks, in response to 12 complaints filed against him, including over his request that the International Criminal Court investigate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

Cassif is responsible for a “systematic and consistent pattern of statements that accuse, both explicitly and implicitly, IDF soldiers of committing serious war crimes,” the committee wrote in its decision on Wednesday.

Such behavior “harms the honor of the Knesset and the public’s trust in the Knesset” as well as boosts Israel’s enemies during wartime, it said.

The committee said it decided to delay the sentence until October due to an upcoming Knesset recess, and the fact that Hadash-Ta’al leader Ayman Odeh is already serving a similar suspension now.

The punishment does not include a ban on voting in the Knesset plenum, Cassif said.

The committee noted that most of the complaints, filed by Knesset members, including Likud MKs Tally Gotliv and Ofir Katz, as well as members of the public, were made during a six-month period when he was earlier banned from the Knesset due to similar behavior.

That ban was instituted after he signed a public petition backing a South African motion accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, and called Palestinian gunmen battling IDF troops in Jenin “freedom fighters.”

The new complaints focused on a series of public comments made by Cassif about the war against Hamas in Gaza, including comparisons to the Holocaust; accusing Israel of committing genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank; comparing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to Israeli hostages being held in Gaza; referring to Netanyahu as a “psychopathic murderer”; and asking ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan to probe Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz and other ministers for war crimes.

Cassif denounced the committee’s decision as an attempt to eliminate Arab representation in the Knesset and vowed to “not bow before this harassment.”

Cassif is Jewish but Hadash-Ta’al is otherwise represented by Arab lawmakers.

“It’s not a matter of parliamentary ethics, but of political censorship and persecution as well as terrorization (“chilling effect”) of the entire leftist camp, Arabs and Jews alike,” Cassif wrote in English in a response posted to his X account. “The real end behind this suspension is to thwart our faction from any parliamentary activity altogether, and, in the longer run, to eliminate any representation of the Arab and the democratic Jewish citizens. My repeated suspensions are merely the appetizer, as it were.”

The committee said the subject of one complaint, filed by Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer and Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen, was not found to have violated the Knesset ethics rules.

The lawmakers had protested a post on X from February in which Cassif shared a picture of Jews lined up outside an emigration office in Vienna in 1938, writing that “this month, exactly 86 years ago, the ‘Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration’ was established in Berlin with the aim of encouraging voluntary emigration of German Jews.”

The committee issued a reprimand against Cohen over a statement in which he called Cassif a “traitor” who “represents the interests of Hamas and the BDS movement and serves as a fifth column among us,” but stopped short of a suspension or other punishment.

In 2023, the committee suspended Cohen from speaking in the Knesset plenum or committees for five days for making racist comments about opposition lawmakers.

An attempt to oust Cassif from his seat failed in the Knesset plenum in February 2024 due to insufficient support from the opposition, with only 85 MKs voting in favor, short of the required 90.

That effort to remove Cassif from the parliament came in response to his public support for South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which has been described as “treasonous” by his critics.

Cassif was instead suspended by the Ethics Committee in November 2024 for six months due to a similar pattern of behavior.

He was previously disqualified from running for the Knesset by the Central Elections Committee in 2019 over his provocative comments, including calling then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum.” That decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Last week, the Knesset House Committee came out overwhelmingly in favor of Hadash-Ta’al leader Odeh over a statement that appeared to equate Israeli hostages held in Gaza by terrorists with Palestinian security prisoners held in Israel. A vote on his removal is slated for Monday.

Odeh is currently serving a two-week suspension until July 22 over a March 2024 incident in which the lawmaker was forcibly removed from the Knesset rostrum after accusing Israeli forces in Gaza of engaging in “murder” and carrying out a “massacre.”