Arab MK accuses terror victim Fuld of ‘executing’ his killer; Likud MK protests
Knesset Ethics Committee to investigate Aida Touma-Sliman for condemning Ari Fuld for shooting the terrorist who stabbed him to death; Palestinian attacker was moderately injured
A Likud backbencher filed a complaint Thursday with the Knesset’s Ethics Committee against an Arab lawmaker who accused an American-Israeli terror victim of “executing” the Palestinian teenager who fatally stabbed him.
“She labeled [Ari] Fuld a murderer, who executed an attacker,” MK Sharren Haskel wrote in her complaint against Joint (Arab) List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, Hadashot TV news reported.
Fuld was killed last month after being stabbed by a Palestinian teenager at a key West Bank junction. After the attack, Fuld chased after 17-year-old Khalil Jabarin and fired his pistol at him, injuring the Palestinian terrorist. Fuld died a short while later of his injuries; the terrorist was lightly hurt.
Security camera footage of the shopping mall at the Gush Etzion Junction released last month shows Fuld, with blood pouring down his back, chasing and shooting Jabarin. A worker in a nearby falafel shop said Fuld saved her life as Jabarin was running towards her with his knife drawn.
During a Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women hearing Wednesday on recent reforms to ease gun restrictions for Israeli citizens, committee chair Amir Ohana of the Likud said, “From the middle of 2015 until the middle of 2016 alone, just in the Jerusalem region, 11 terror attacks were thwarted by people carrying personal weapons, for example what happened with Ari Fuld.”
Touma-Sliman interrupted Ohana. “In other words, there was an execution there, without knowing what exactly was going to happen,” she said.
“I’m sorry that ordinary people pay the price for the government’s crazy policies,” she added, though it was unclear from her remarks whether she was referring to Fuld’s murder or the shooting of the Palestinian terrorist.
“It left me shocked by her demonstration of support for acts of terror and incitement during a Knesset committee meeting,” Haskel said in her complaint. “Statements of this kind are not acceptable and have no place, but certainly not in the Knesset.”
Later in the Wednesday discussion, Haskel also praised Fuld’s actions, to which Touma-Sliman responded, “Do you know how many settlers’ lives would be saved if they left” the West Bank.
Haskel compared Touma-Sliman’s remarks to telling a woman, “Don’t walk around in a bikini because you’ll be raped.”
Touma-Sliman on Thursday rejected the ethics complaint, saying it was a political move for Haskel to burnish her Likud credentials.
“I have no intention of addressing Haskel’s distortions,” she said. “I won’t be used as another card in her Likud primaries campaign at the expense of the most human values of love for others and respect for human life, regardless of who they are.”
In a tweet, the Arab lawmaker protested the arming of Jewish residents of the West Bank.
“It is no secret that I see the settlers as an arm of the occupation, and as long as it continues, innocent people from both nations will pay for it with their lives,” she wrote. “Arming part of the population in the context of unbridled incitement against the Palestinians is a license to kill whenever a Jew with a gun in his pocket doesn’t like the look of an Arab.”
Fuld, 45, was a resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat. He is survived by his wife and four children.
