Liberman slams Arab MK for attending Arafat memorial

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman condemned Arab Joint List chairman MK Ayman Odeh Thursday for taking part in a memorial to Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, having last month boycotted the funeral of former president Shimon Peres.

“He is not prepared to come to the Peres funeral in Jerusalem, but to speak at the Arafat memorial in Ramallah, yes,” Liberman fumed in a video posted to his Facebook page.

Liberman said he would continue efforts to oust Odeh from the Knesset, suggesting the Arab legislator should instead be “a member of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.”

The threat appears to be a public relations move, as Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, has no legal means for actually carrying it out.

The hawkish defense minister has been leading a boycott of the Joint List since the Peres funeral last month; the entire Arab party declined to attend due to the “complicated” history its members said Peres represented.

Odeh defended the unanimous decision to stay away from the funeral, saying at the time that it was a “national day of mourning in which I have no place; not in the narrative, not in the symbols that exclude me, not in the stories of Peres, as a man who built up Israel’s defenses.”

Last week, MKs from the six parties in the coalition staged a walkout in each plenary speech made by Joint List lawmakers as a protest over their funeral boycott.

Liberman called the Joint List MKs “representatives of terror groups in the Israeli government” who are “not legitimate [and] not wanted here.”

The plenum boycott of the 13-member coalition of Arab parties, the fourth-largest faction in the Knesset, was initiated by Liberman and is supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In response, the Joint List Knesset members walked out of Netanyahu’s speech inaugurating the Knesset’s winter session last Monday.

Odeh later told party members at a faction meeting that he was “not surprised” at the move, and noted what he called “fascist and racist policies” of the government.

Raoul Wootliff contributed to this report.