News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi has accused Likud MK Limor Livnat of trying to push Israel backward instead of forward in relations with the Arab minority in the country. He blasted her proposal for removing Arabic as one of the two official languages in Israel and officially making it a secondary language alongside Russian and English.

MK Tibi said that Russian and English speakers move to Israel to become part of the Jewish state and that their languages cannot be equated with Arabic, whose speakers remain a distinct and separate culture. Attorney Gilad Kariv, leader of the Reform movement in the country, also criticized the proposal, saying that "whoever thinks that the Jewish state is dependent on language does not understand the substance of the country."