AG opposes disqualification of Arab Knesset member Yazbak

Attorney General Mandelblit opposes the disqualification of Joint List MK Heba Yazbak, whom a majority of Jewish Knesset members wish to ban ahead of the March elections.

In a letter to the Central Election Committee, Mandelblit says there is not “a critical mass of evidence” against Yazbak, even though “her statements bring her close to the threshold of disqualification.”

He says that her response to queries from the Central Elections Committee about her controversial statements made it clear that “she doesn’t cross [the threshold].”

In a recent interview with Channel 13, Yazbak said that “international law permits people under occupation to take action to liberate themselves.” When the interviewer pressed her and asked if she considered attacks on soldiers to be legitimate resistance she demurred, saying, “What isn’t legitimate is the continued occupation.”

Earlier today, in her response to a query on the quote from Mandelblit, who is processing the request to have her banned, Yazbak said she stands by the statement and insisted that it did not imply support for violence.

In addition to her comments on Channel 13, Yazbak, a member of the Arab nationalist Balad party in the Joint List alliance, is facing criticism over several of her Facebook posts, including one in 2015 in praise of slain Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 took part in the brutal murder of members of an Israeli family in the northern city of Nahariya.

The post included a picture of Kuntar with the inscription: “The martyr fighter Samir Kuntar.”

— With Raoul Wootliff