Israeli parliament continues to assault its own citizens' civil rights

Attacks on the Supreme Court, legislation to silence human rights groups, and threats to abolish the public broadcaster shows liberties are in decline, writes Paul Kearns in Tel Aviv

Fri, 11 Jul, 2025 - 01:38

Paul Kearns

There has been no shortage of profoundly disturbing, objectionable, and arguably genocidal quotes from senior Israeli politicians over the past 20 months of war on Gaza.

Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of finance: “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral.”

Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel: “It’s an entire nation out there [in Gaza] that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.”

Yoav Galant, the minister of defence: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

But it is the following social media post by Ayman Odeh, leader of the left-wing and predominantly Arab, Hadash party, that earned the wrath and censure of his fellow Knesset (Israeli parliament) members and, with it, possible expulsion from the Knesset itself.

“I’m happy to see the [Israeli] hostages and [Palestinian] prisoners released … next we must free both peoples from the burden of the occupation. We were all born free … Gaza will win.”

Equating hostages and prisoners and the cryptic “Gaza will win” seemingly sealed Odeh’s fate.

Ayman Odeh is an Israeli-Palestinian parliamentarian. There was no threatened expulsion of Jewish Ayre Deri, the leader of a Religious-Orthodox party, following his controversial and frankly bizarre statement that the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2003, “saved the nation of Israel” — implying somehow the murder of 1,200 Israelis indirectly saved Israel from Iranian nuclear Armageddon.

Odeh is lionised in Israeli leftist political circles and was once likened to the Martin Luther King of Israeli politics in a long interview with The New Yorker magazine. His status and threatened expulsion explains why the left-leaning Haaretz led on the story with the following headline: ‘Outrageous Abuse: Ousting Ayman Odeh From Knesset Is a Declaration of War on Arabs in Israel.’

The vote in the Knesset to initiate Odeh’s expulsion, and in particular the support of the main opposition centrist party, represents a dark moment for Israeli democracy. A full vote of the Knesset is required to uphold the recommendation.

Israeli democracy. The combination of those two short words has, of course, long been bitterly contested.

This is a country with free and fair elections, but where more than two million Palestinians live under occupation in the West Bank in a de facto one-state without the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.

This is a country with a robust and free press, where mainstream television channels refuse to show the reality of the war crimes committed in Gaza.

This is a country of all its citizens, whose parliament passed the 2018 Nation-State Law codifying the long-standing privileges of its Jewish citizens. It is easy, of course, to find quotes to demonise right-wing Israeli politicians, in part because there is no shortage of goons, loons, cartoonish villains, and downright nasty political characters in Israeli politics.

The Likud parliamentarian Tally Gotliv ticks many boxes. The far-right Likud ministers Maya Golan and Amichai Chikli recently gave unsettling and frankly bizarre interviews to English television presenter Piers Morgan. The famed documentarist Louis Theroux’s film on far-right settlers gave oxygen to the infamous and chilling Daniella Weiss.

All the above make “great” television — performative, purposely provocative. They all personify the Israeli political characters; arguably caricatures we all love to hate. Notwithstanding the fact they are all widely detested and ridiculed in Israel itself, they all arguably bolster non-Israeli prejudices of Israelis.

It is the views of ordinary Israelis, middle-of-the-road voters, centrists, secular-suburban, however one wishes to define or label them, that perhaps better reveal the soul of Israel. They are, by definition, everywhere, but also by inclination less willing to talk or perform.

Their views on occasion can be hopeful, inspiring even, at other times bleak, too often revealing a chilling indifference to the horror in Gaza.

With this in mind, the Irish Examiner took to the streets of Tel Aviv to ask residents their views on the expulsion of Odeh, the most well-known and most well-respected Israeli-Palestinian member of parliament.

All those I spoke to identified as leftist voters, all were critics of Netanyahu and the far-right government.

All, however, expressed either indifference or claimed not to know anything about the latest assault on Palestinian rights.

Yehonatan, 38, simply shrugged before admitting: “I didn’t even know about it.”

Udi, 34, was also non-committal: “Wow, I’m not that up to speed on that whole Ayman Odeh thing, so I really don’t have an opinion.”

Yael, 44, was equally phlegmatic in her response: “Well, honestly, I didn’t hear about it. So, I don’t know what to say”.

Maya, 52, confessed she didn’t “know the details well, but it feels like another step towards the elimination of Israeli democracy”.

It seems not too many Tel Avivians are either informed or much bothered by the threatened expulsion, on spurious grounds, from the Knesset of Israel’s most prominent Israeli-Arab parliamentarian.

But perhaps, Tel Avivians are simply exhausted by the government’s year-long assault on Israeli civil rights. This includes repeated attempts to dismantle the independence of the Supreme Court, advancing legislation designed to silence human rights groups, and threats to abolish the public broadcasting authority.

The Irish Examiner spoke with Odeh over the weekend. I specifically asked him if he was concerned about the apparent indifference of centre-left voters on the streets of Tel Aviv, on this latest assault on Israeli democracy and freedom of speech?

“I don’t think the entire public is indifferent,” he said.

“If you looked at my phone, you’d find thousands of messages — from friends, supporters, many of them Jewish — expressing solidarity and support, fighting alongside us for the same values: Peace, equality, democracy.”

I asked him if had he a specific message for Irish readers?

“Of course. I want to address the Irish people — a people with a history of struggle for independence, equality, and justice.

“We, the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the Palestinian people as a whole, are not fighting just for ourselves — we are fighting for a shared future, for peace, for equality, and for an end to this war and the occupation.

Today they’re trying to expel me — tomorrow they’ll try to silence anyone who dares to resist.

With those words in mind and the seeming indifference I found on the streets of Tel Aviv to the disintegration of Israeli democracy, it is neither hyperbole nor inappropriate to paraphrase the well-known quote from German pastor Martin Niemöller.

“First, they came for the Arabs, and I did not speak out — because I was not an Arab. Then they came for the leftists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a leftist. Then they came for the journalists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a journalist, Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”