Hadash MK Ofer Cassif at a Knesset Arrangements Committee meeting on June 21, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofer Cassif says that he does not consider the Palestinian man who killed Ronen Hanania in a shooting attack near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Araba to be a terrorist.
In an interview with the Ynet news site, Cassif is asked if he considers settlers killed in West Bank attacks to be victims of terror, with Hanania given as an example.
Cassif, the Hadash faction’s only Jewish MK, says he is not.
“Don’t portray him as a simple man,” he says of Hanania. “Especially those that live as a bone in the throat [of the Palestinians], they can’t be considered as innocent civilians,” Cassif says.
Ronen Hanania, shot dead in a terrorist attack near the Kiryat Arba settlement in the southern West Bank on October 29, 2022. (Courtesy)
“Myself and my friends in Hadash have for years said that we support a nonviolent struggle, but that’s what happens in every place where there is occupation and repression — those who expect the occupied and repressed to just sit and do nothing are lying to themselves,” Cassif says.
Hanania was shot when he went with his son to a convenience store located between Kiryat Arba and the adjacent city of Hebron.
The attacker was identified as Muhammed Kamel al-Jabari, an apparent member of the Hamas terror group. After shooting Hanania and his son, Jabari opened fire on medics and settlement security guards who arrived at the scene to help the pair.
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Monday, October 31, 2022
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