PM says he’ll defend right of Arab MKs to be elected, slams their ‘hypocrisy’

A screaming match erupts at the Knesset during a discussion on the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, when a Likud MK tells a Joint List MK that Israel “is doing a favor to the Arabs by even granting them ID cards.”

During a discussion of the law, which prohibits citizens of certain countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza Strip) from automatically receiving Israeli citizenship after marrying an Israeli national, Likud MK and Deputy Interior Minister Yaron Mazuz made the above comment to Joint list MK Aida Touma Sliman. Shortly afterwards, Meretz MK Michal Rozin stepped up to the podium with her ID card and demanded that Mazuz apologize. Mazuz then addressed another Joint List MK, Hanin Zoabi, and told her “those who support terrorism cannot be here.”

Unusually, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the plenum for a vote on the citizenship law, stepped up to the podium and lashed out at the opposition MKs:

Every citizen, Jew or non-Jew, has the right to vote and to be elected but all the citizens of Israel have a duty to obey the law but no one has the right to accuse IDF soldiers – who defend all of us, Jews and non-Jews alike – with false accusations of being war criminals. You have the right to be elected and this is a universal right, which I will defend. But I have no duty to agree with your hypocrisy. I didn’t hear a single word from you on the horrible crimes committed in Syria and many other places around the globe.

I want to say two things: the right to vote and to be elected is universal; there is no argument about that. But I speak now about the hypocrisy. I see two issues here, you have a right to say your piece and this is a right which we will defend, which I will defend. But I have no duty to agree with the hypocrisy. I did not hear from the women and men here condemnation of the real war crimes in Syria, in Yemen. I don’t hear a word about this and I hear false accusations against IDF soldiers.