Attorney Michael Litvak has once again appealed to the legal counsel with a demand that Knesset member Heba Yazbak be removed from the Joint List in the upcoming elections because of what he defined as promotion and incitement of terror.
"There are several publications of hers where she incites terror and supports the most horrible murderers,” Litvak said. “She calls Samir Kuntar, the perpetrator of the brutal terror attack in Nahariya, a hero and a shaheed." Litvak clarifies why even though Heba has succeeded in jumping over the High Court hurdle once before there is a chance that the petition this time will invalidate her candidacy.
"There were petitions against Balad in the previous election,” Litvak continued, “and the High Court said there were statements of incitement by Heba and there was a good chance she could be disqualified, but the High Court said we should petition to disqualify her alone and not the complete list. The court’s desire is to do everything so as not to invalidate an entire list. That is, if we had petitioned against Heba alone, there was a good chance that she would not have run in the previous election. So this time we are taking the High Court’s ruling at its word and moving forward with it."
Litvak further added that there is a strong sense of “a double standard where the High Court is concerned as it eagerly sought to disqualify Gopstein, Ben-Ari, and Marzel, candidates from a right-wing party, on the basis of their statements and Facebook posts from many years ago, as opposed to the Court’s non-plussed approach towards Heba. I hope that after our petition to the legal counsel this time around, the Court will support Heba’s disqualification.”
We asked attorney Litvak to try to understand the logic of the legal counsel’s conduct towards Otzma Yehudit, a right-wing party, as opposed to ignoring the statements made by members of the Joint List, an anti-Zionist Arab party. Litvak cannot explain this. "Honestly, I can't understand it,” he admitted. “There is no doubt that right-wing candidates are extremely annoying to the legal counsel which uses underhanded tactics to disqualify them, even while it refuses to check candidates from the Joint List. This is my feeling as a jurist who is objectively trying to evaluate what is happening here.”
In his remarks, Litvak commented that the focus on Heba’s statement regarding Samir Kuntar is not the only one of its kind, but it is highlighted due to the brutality of Kuntar's act.
Shai Glick, CEO of ‘BeTzalmo,’ representing the murdered victims’ families, responded as follows: “It’s inconceivable that the legal counsel ignores a request from one of our families and disqualifies Michael Ben-Ari and Baruch Marzel for much milder words than those of Heba. We demand that the legal counsel get involved in this matter in accordance with the High Court’s ruling and demand Heba’s disqualification and criminal prosecution for incitement and support of terror.”