Far-right leader Smotrich calls for ban on Arab political parties in Israel

The leader of the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism Party, MK Bezalel Smotrich, calls for a ban on Arab political parties and stirs up fears of “massacres” by “thousands of Arab rioters” during wartime, in a speech at the Institute for Counter Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya.

Smotrich says that the biggest security threat to the State of Israel is “the threat at home from nationalist elements among Arab Israelis.”

The leader of the far-right party describes “hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons being directed at that moment of truth against Israeli citizens,” and evokes images of “thousands of Arab rioters, equipped with the best weapons, descending on the towns and cities of Israel and carrying out huge massacres at a time when Israel’s security forces are involved or stretched to the limit on multiple war fronts.”

Smotrich says that a first step to coping with such a “threat” would be to outlaw the Arab political parties, which, he alleges, support armed struggle against Israel and should therefore be banned.