Hanin Zoabi
Hanin ZoabiFlash 90

Deputy Education Minister MK Avi Wortzman (Jewish Home) applauded the conviction and sentencing of ex-Balad MK Sa'id Nafa, who will be spending the next year in prison. Nafa was convicted Thursday for traveling to an enemy country and meeting with foreign agents.

At issue was a trip Nafa organized to Syria in 2007. The indictment against Nafa includes charges against him and 16 other individuals, most of them Druze sheikhs, who illegally traveled to Syria between 2007 and 2010. The indictments were first handed down in 2011. Nafa was sentenced to two concurrent terms of six months and a year in prison for two offenses, meeting with the terrorists and traveling to Syria.

“Balad continues to be a nest of terrorists in the Knesset,” Wortzman said. “Its members are keeping up the tradition of traitorous MK Azmi Bishara, and operate against the interests of Israel. We will work to ensure that this fifth column does not have a part of Israeli democracy. Let them have their place of honor in the Syrian or Qatari parliaments,” he said.

Ironically, Nafa was chosen to replace another rogue MK – Azmi Bishara, who also met with enemy agents and disclosed to them Israeli military secrets. Bishara, who fled Israel in 2007, is still a fugitive from justice, accused of treason and espionage during the Second Lebanon War.

Next on the target of right-wing MKs is another Balad MK, Hanin Zoabi. On Sunday, MK Danny Danon (Likud) filed a petition with the High Court demanding that the Attorney General begin the process of filing an indictment against Zoabi on charges of incitement for her comments justifying the abduction and subsequent murder of Israeli teens Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, and Gilad Sha'ar.

When the teens were abducted, Zoabi said that the kidnappers were "not terrorists. Is it strange that people who are under the Occupation and living an abnormal life, under an occupation in which Israel kidnaps Palestinian Arabs and jails them every day, go ahead and kidnap? They are not terrorists, I do not agree with you,” she told an interviewer on Radio Tel Aviv. “They have seen no other way to change their reality and they have to resort to these measures until Israel sobers up a bit and feels the suffering of others."

In his petition, Danon said that “the time has come for the authorities who enforce the law to understand that there is a Hamas terrorist in the Knesset. Zoabi uses her Knesset immunity to act against the State of Israel as a Knesset member. She justifies terrorists by claiming they are not terrorists. She identifies with and supports the enemies of Israel. I ask the court to help open the eyes of law enforcement and send Zoabi to the place she really belongs – prison,” Danon wrote.

“I hope that the court decision will be a turning point in how it deals with these MKs, and will follow through with prosecution of the terrorist Zoabi,” Wortsman added.