Liberman urges Elections Committee to ban Jewish member of mostly Arab party

Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman submit a request to the Elections Committee for Jewish candidate Ofer Kassif to be disqualified from running for the Hadash-Ta’al party in the upcoming elections.

“Anyone who claims that Israel should not be a Jewish state cannot sit in the Israeli Knesset,” Liberman charges, according to Hebrew-language media.

Ofer Kassif of the Hadash-Ta’al party. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

“Whoever permits the [spilling] of the blood of IDF soldiers and determines that harm to them is not terrorism, and anyone who thinks that Jews who go up to the Temple Mount are a cancer that needs to be eliminated, cannot sit in the Israeli Knesset. His place is in parliament in Gaza or in Ramallah,” he adds.

Kassif responds: “I will enter the Knesset no matter what he thinks of me.”

Kassif is the only Jewish candidate on the mostly Arab party’s list, after Dov Khenin announced his resignation from politics last month. He is placed fifth on the Hadash and Ta’al parties’ joint list of top 10 candidates for Knesset elections on April 9.

As a Hebrew University professor, he made headlines four years ago after calling Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum.”

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