MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) appealed on Tuesday to the High Court, asking that it issue an injunction against the Knesset’s Ethics Committee’s decision to bar her from the Knesset committees and plenum for six months.
The punishment, handed down to Zoabi in July, followed complaints filed against Zoabi by several MKs, including Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud), following her statement that the murderers of the three Jewish yeshiva boys are not terrorists and even sought to justify the act.
The appeal states, according to the Ma’ariv Hashavua newspaper, that "the decision of the Ethics Committee to impose the most strict sanction it can - a suspension for six months - due to pronounced political statements by the petitioner, who is an MK from a minority faction in the opposition, was made without authority, in violation of the immunity of the petitioner and her freedom of political expression, which is a fundamental right of particular importance as an elected official.”
The appeal continues, "This decision is an almost complete denial of the petitioner's ability to function in the Knesset.”
The appeal also states that since the court is not likely to have enough time to rule on the petition prior to the start of the Knesset winter session, the court is being requested to suspend the punishment until it discusses the appeal.
Zoabi is infamous for her provocative, anti-Israel speeches, including one in which she said that Israel has “no right to a normal life” and a later address claiming that “the Israeli occupation” was behind the murder of Israelis in Bulgaria.
On another occasion, she declared that Israel should "thank her" for allowing Jews to live in the Jewish State.
More recently, Zoabi wrote an article encouraging Hamas on the terror group's website, and was briefly handcuffed during violent pro-Palestinian protests in Haifa.