Ethics panel penalizes Likud’s Gotliv, who says she’ll boycott votes in protest

The Knesset’s Ethics Committee decides to punish Likud MK Tally Gotliv for her incendiary assertion last month that Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut was to blame for a deadly Palestinian terror attack.

The panel, noting that Gotliv doubled down on her accusation and hasn’t walked it back in any way, says the remark is not protected by freedom of speech and is a “severe ethics violation.” It unanimously bars her from speaking in the Knesset plenum for two days and in parliamentary committees for three days.

Gotliv responds that she’s “embarrassed” at the attempt to “terrorize” her and that in protest, she will not attend votes in the parliament until her punishment is over.

“I’m not a toy,” she says, accusing the committee members from her Likud party of “seeking to calm the atmosphere at my expense.”

The Ethics Committee also bars Hadash-Ta’al party leader Ayman Odeh from speaking at the Knesset plenum for one day over his call last year for Arab members of Israel’s security forces to “lay down their weapons,” and for a physical altercation in 2021 with far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir — now the national security minister — at a hospital.