In a Newsweek op-ed this week, Israeli Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi published a series of misleading statements and outright lies about Israel.
From incorrect assertions that Israeli soldiers had murdered a 15 year old girl while she was lying helpless on the ground, to entirely false accusations of “executions,” to a surreal denial that Jews have any history in the Land of Israel: Zoabi’s essay was closer to a fantasy novel than an opinion piece. But for Zoabi, this is just business as usual.

People who don’t know Israel are often surprised to discover that Israel’s population includes 1.7 Million Arabs who are full citizens with full equal rights, and that Arab Israelis make up several political parties and hold 17 seats in the Israeli Knesset: including the seat held by Zoabi herself.
Yet Haneen Zoabi’s tenure as a member of Knesset has not amounted to much: among her dubious accomplishments, Zoabi sailed on the 2010 “flotilla” attempting to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, which interdicts maritime weapons smuggling to the Strip. Zoabi’s attempt to break such a blockade could be viewed as technical act of war against her own country, also known as treason. At the very least, she directly attempted to place her own fellow citizens in danger.
Zoabi has worked to persuade the international public that Israel is an “apartheid state” despite the irony that she herself is a full citizen and member of Knesset. On the last anniversary of the Holocaust event of Kristallnacht, Zoabi visited Amsterdam where she gave a speech accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing modeled on Nazism.”

She has also justified the idea of Israeli Arabs joining Islamic State even while she called the IDF “worse than ISIS,” and provocatively met with the families of terrorists who killed Israelis.
Zoabi has supported the Israel-hating author Ben White, defended the inciting Sheikh Raed Salah, and even allied herself with the terror group Hamas. In 2014, Zoabi even wrote an op-ed in a Hamas publication justifying rocket attacks.
The misfortune of Haneen Zoabi is not that she seeks to damage her own country or even that she must lie in to do so. The greater tragedy is that Zoabi squandered her uniquely influential position in the Israeli government to pursue a campaign of defamatory propaganda, instead of working for positive change benefiting the people who elected her.
In short, Zoabi abandoned her Arab Israeli constituents for provocative grandstanding and, this week, for the fleeting spotlight of a Newsweek op-ed.
Featured image CC BY Circuito Fora do Eixo; Zoabi via SocialTV;
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16 Comments
Date of birth 23 May 1969 (age 46)
Place of birth Nazareth, Israel
Haneen Zoubi is a Sabra, whether she likes it or not. Born in the Jewish State of Israel. If she has got problems with this fact, she ought to complain to her parents about why they did not choose to become Arab refugees from British Mandate Palestine during the 1947-1948 Arab war on Israel….
Isn’t this sedition ? If yes, she should be arrested and tried. We are at war with all arabs who try to remove us as a people, worldwide.
I don’t know what the process would entail, but why don’t Israel expell Zoabi from the Kanessat?
This stinking thing zoabi ius a traitor and she incites arabs and the world against Israel! She has no right to sit in the Knesset nor to keep her citizenship. She must be jailed and expelled when her jail term has ended. In fact most of moslem israeli arabs should be expelles except those loyal to Israel which probably do not exceed 10 or 20% of these moslem arabs.
Indigenous Palestinians? – not Arab but Jewish. The grand majority of people today in this narrow Corridor of land that hosts Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip are of families three to four generations old. My family is a Palestinian Jewish. The Arabs embrace the name Palestinian to attribute to themselves a flavor of antiquity, which they do not have, compared to the Jews. Now they falsely adopt the term indigenous and the media uses it with no hesitation. This creates a false image of who the Palestinian Arabs are – recent arrival of immigrants during the Ottoman Empire time. Nothing to do with the Filistines in the Bible. The revival of the ancient name Filistines was made by the Brits after 1st World War. Money off the time was named Lira of Palestina – Eretz Israel. Palestinian Jews by the way, got rid from the name Palestinian, and instead revive their original name “Israel” and by that got rid of the name given to the land by the Romans, after they had suppressed the Jewish rebellion 2000 years ago. The indigenous of this land are the Jews! Let’s not help spread another lie.
Daniel, you are right about the misleading statements but you are missing the main Palestinian tactic. Firstly, Zoabi didn’t say soldiers murdered the girl (she doesn’t say who the “man” was). She takes a true incident (indeed a 15 year old stabber with scissors that was shot dead) and builds a story around it. The facts? Yes as someone with a security background, this probably was excessive use of force in that the final shots probably weren’t needed. The spin? Out of the dozen or so videos of attackers made this was the only one I saw where you actually see excessive use of force. All of the others were absolutely justified. Even this one would perhaps have the mitigating circumstance of the security guard (or whatever he was) facing two attackers and running from one to the other (Zoabi omits the second attacker). But the Palestinian propaganda tactic is to take a single mistake made by Israel/Israeli’s and build it into a “pattern of behavior”. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking mistakes aren’t made. The lie here is the false pattern of behavior. Again, with her standing for the traditional prayers, a grain of truth. Again the police holding the bodies, a grain of truth. But the remainder, all a spin.
Many thanks for the good work,
Ely
it is written, that if one goes not have anything good to say about someone, then it is better to stay silent. i have absolutely nothing to say about zoabi. my silence is deafening. as far as what i wanted to say, i would be put away so fast,and prevented from commenting on fb. just consider it said.
For crying out loud, get rid of her. Send her to Gaza to live – actually I saw pictures of Gaza which are quite nice. What’s Israel’s problem that they cannot get rid of her?
Why are the Israeli COURTS so beligerent to ISRAEL’s CITIZENS yet so stupid and pander to Arabs who are evil and dangerous? This MUST STOP. JUSTICE is a priority , but not according to personal opinion of the judges, but to the TORAH of Moses, adjusted to todays LAWS of the NATION. She HAS TO BE EXPELLED FROM THE KNESSET, NOW! Trued for treason & Jailed, NO EXCEPTIONS. Along with the other traitors who continue to betray Israel to their enemies.
This is amazing, a member of the Israeli government who expresses anti Israel sentiment. This does demonstrate that Israel is a thriving democracy.
She does much more than express anti-Israel sentiment, she actively encourages terrorism against Israeli citizens, by meeting with the families of terrorists and referring to their loved ones who committed acts of terror as heroic martyrs. If she served in the US Congress and did such things in support if ISIS or Al Qaeda, she would be impeached and indicted. In Israel, she still sits in the Parliament (Knesset).
Zoabi should be in Ramalah runing to replace Abu Mazen! That job wil fit her standards.
Just another typical member of the religion of peace dedicated to biting the hands that feed them.
The only thing that will shut her up for good, is to take couple of Israel Arabs who love Israel who will molest her in public and put the molestation on U-Tube,
This will show the world what Arabs (like her) do in the EU these days (rapes, molestation, theft, riots, etc.)
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