Ra’am, Hadash-Ta’al MKs sanctioned for inflammatory statements over Israel-Hamas war

Citing inflammatory statements, the Knesset’s Ethics Committee sanctions two Arab lawmakers, banning them from Knesset hearings and votes for specified periods, and docking their pay.

The committee finds that Ra’am MK Iman Khatib-Yasin “denied atrocities” committed by Hamas during its October 7 terror attack, and that Hadash-Ta’al MK Aida Touma-Sliman falsely accused Israel of committing a “war crime” during its ongoing war to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Khatib-Yasin, who apologized for her remarks after she was pressured by Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas to resign, is banned from Knesset committee and plenum sessions for one month and has two weeks of pay stripped.

Touma-Sliman, who the committee said did not apologize and did not recant her statements, is barred from Knesset committee and plenum sessions for two months, and also receives a two-week pay deduction.

Joint Arab List MK Aida Touma-Sliman in the Knesset in Jerusalem on June 8, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Shortly after the Knesset screened raw footage from October 7 attacks, which Khatib-Yasin said she declined to watch, the lawmaker told the Knesset Channel on November 5, “They didn’t slaughter babies and they didn’t rape women, at least not in the footage.”

The lawmaker suggested that if such acts happened, they would have been included in the footage, adding: “If it happened, it’s shameful… If it had happened.”

Touma-Sliman wrote on X on November 11 that, according to reports, Israel had bombed hospital operating rooms and was shooting Gazans trying to evacuate from north to south Gaza, through pre-arranged humanitarian corridors.

The October 7 massacre saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages, including babies and octogenarians, under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities. The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 people were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said Tuesday that 11,240 people had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, in figures that cannot be independently verified, do not distinguish between civilians and terror operatives, and also include those killed in hundreds of failed Palestinian rocket launches.