Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharanovich on Thursday demanded that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz immediately charge Arab MK Jamal Zahalka, after Zahalka compared Defense Minister Ehud Barak to a Nazi. Aharanovich suggested that Zahalka be charged on a series of crimes, from supporting a terror group to insulting a public official.
At a demonstration by Israeli Arabs against Israel's defensive actions in last year's Operation Cast Lead near the Erez Crossing Thursday morning, Zahalka said that Barak was just like a Nazi, "who enjoys classical music along with murdering children in Gaza." He added that the Kassam rocket attacks on Israel's south, which, in his words, "supposedly came from Gaza," were fired "because of Israel's policies against the Palestinians," and that Israel was "starving Gaza." Aharanovich also demanded that Mazuz charge MK Talib As-Sana – on whose cellphone Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh spoke to the crowd at the demonstration – be charged with supporting a terror group.