Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai and the head of the Department of Investigations and Intelligence are expected to request the launching of a criminal investigation against MKs Ahmed Tibi and Ofer Cassif from the Joint List Party, after both were documented assaulting police officers in two different incidents over the last two days.
The police are collecting investigative materials from the two incidents in order to formulate an opinion that will be presented to the State Attorney and the Attorney General in order to examine the opening of a criminal investigation against the two Knesset members.
"A situation in which elected officials terrorize the activities of the police and physically harm them will not be tolerated," the Israel Police said on Friday.
Earlier in the day, Cassif was filmed striking an Israeli police officer who was blocking him from driving to a demonstration against the evacuation of buildings on Mount Hebron.
Cassif hit the officer in the head after his car was stopped by the police while he was on his way to the protest. The MK then took advantage of his political immunity and entered the area with his vehicle even though it was declared a closed military area.
On Thursday, Tibi confronted police in eastern Jerusalem and helped a detainee escape arrest. The suspect was later apprehended and arrested for questioning by the police.
Both MKs have a history of anti-Israel statements and actions despite being elected members of the Knesset.
Cassif, the sole Jewish lawmaker in the predominantly Arab Joint List, once shared a Facebook post calling Ayelet Shaked, who at the time was serving as Justice Minister, a “neo-Nazi scum”.
In 2017, he was recorded during a class comparing the State of Israel to Nazi Germany, warning that Israel was “on a slippery slope” to fascism.
In late 2019, Cassif said that Israel should not be compared to an apartheid state because, he claimed, it is “worse than apartheid”.
Tibi has in the past encouraged Arabs to disobey the “Muezzin Law” which would limit the use of loudspeakers during the call to prayer in mosques.
He has also praised the Palestinian Authority’s “martyrs” at a ceremony held on the occasion of "Palestinian Martyrs Day” and sponsored by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Tibi once described Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman as a “Jewish ISIS”, after Liberman advocated for “cutting of the heads” of Arabs who were not loyal to Israel.
Last month, Tibi accused Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the Chief Rabbi of Tzfat, of racism, while also denigrating him as “human garbage”.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)