MK Hanin Zoabi in High Court
MK Hanin Zoabi in High CourtFlash 90

A panel of High Court judges are to decide Tuesday morning a motion filed by MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) against the Knesset Ethics Committee's decision to bar her from Knesset plenum and committee sessions for six months. The fact that the Knesset has been dissolved does not seem to have affected the proceedings.

The judges have not mollycoddled Zoabi in the session. Judge Hanan Meltzer noted that there is “no precedent in the entire world for a statement by a member of parliament that calls for a siege on his own country," like Zoabi did in one of the statements that led to her distancing.

Regarding Zoabi's refusal to call the murderer-abductors of three yeshiva boys terrorists, Judge Esther Hayut said: “I fail to understand how a person who defines herself as being opposed to violence can justify and understand people who kidnap children who are on their way home. This is a black sign. What is a person who kidnaps a child on the way from school and murders him in the car in cold blood? Is there another definition for him except 'terrorist'?”

Knesset Legal Advisor, Attorney Eyal Yinon, said that Zoabi's statement about the murdered yeshiva boys “is not another infuriating political statement but identification with the country's enemies, and even if there is no criminal offense here, the [Knesset's House] Committee has the authority to discuss it.”

"The second statement is even more serious and it was a written one, so that it was preceded by thought,” added Yinon. “This is an article that Zoabi wrote in the course of Operation Protective Edge, in which she said that "we must start a popular uprising, besiege Israel, stop security coordination and stop negotiating with it.”

Zoabi is represented by New Israel Fund grantees Adalah and ACRI.

MK Danny Danon (Likud) is also attending the session. He said: “It is not enough to distance Zoabi from the plenum. She must be distanced from the Israeli Knesset completely. The meaning of allowing people who are enemies of the nation – people who seek our downfall, who support our enemies – to be part of the Knesset, is in effect giving a prize to terrorism, a danger to democracy, and assistance to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Zoabi filed the motion in October, against an Ethics Committee decision that was made in July, following complaints filed against Zoabi by several MKs, including Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud). The complaints followed her statement that the murderers of the three Jewish yeshiva boys are not terrorists.

The appeal states that "the decision of the Ethics Committee to impose the most strict sanction it can - a suspension for six months - due to political statements made 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.”