The London-based Arabic-language Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper has called to boycott any Israeli government that includes the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party led by Avigdor Lieberman, which won 15 seats in last week’s elections, becoming Israel’s third largest party. An editorial in the paper on Saturday termed Lieberman “the Israeli racist who promotes policies of ethnic cleansing against Arabs.”
“Any stand against a government that includes Lieberman will have to be more aggressive than that against the racist regime in South Africa until it was overthrown. A firm stand against Lieberman will only be the start of a broader mission against the Israeli governments who carried out wars of mass annihilation against the Palestinian people,” the London paper said.
The boycott effort was started by Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, the chairman of Ra’am-Ta’al, who compared Lieberman to a European neo-Nazi, and said that an international boycott of Lieberman would be similar to the current boycott of Hamas.
“This is the place to recall that European nations also boycotted the leader of the right-wing Austrian party Jorg Haider when his party won the clean and free elections, because they saw him as a racist leader,” Tibi told a Tunisian newspaper on Thursday.
An Arab-Israeli school principal, Ali Zahalka, wrote however in an op-ed piece in the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Acharonot prior to elections that Arabs “got what they deserved” in the wake of Lieberman’s popularity.
“We did not cry out in the face of rocket attacks on southern residents that went on for years," wrote Zahalka. "We did not cry out in the face of the suffering of our brethren, Gaza residents, who have been brutally repressed by Hamas. Yet we cried out, of all things, in the face of an onslaught against the most radical element in the Arab world.”
Tibi recently told foreign diplomats, “I expect you to boycott any Israeli government that includes the fascist Lieberman just as you boycotted Austria when Jorg Haider was in its government,” he said.