person:michael ben ari

Israeli Arab slate, far-left candidate banned from election hours after Kahanist leader allowed to run
Jonathan Lis and Jack Khoury Mar 07, 2019 7:07 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-far-left-lawmaker-banned-from-israeli-election-for-supporting-terr

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6999671.1551944348!/image/2018456484.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/2018456484.jpg

Arab political sources say the move is evidence of racism and the delegitimization of Arab society in Israel, accusing Netanyahu’s Likud party of anti-Arab incitement

The Central Election Committee disqualified the Arab joint slate Balad-United Arab List and Ofer Cassif, a member of politicial alliance Hadash-Ta’al, from running in the election on Wednesday, opposing the opinion of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit.

Michael Ben Ari and Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Kahanist, far-right Otzma Yehudit party had petitioned against both lists. The committee approved Ben Air to run in the election earlier Wednesday.

The decisions will be referred to the Supreme Court on Sunday for approval. A ban against a party slate may be appealed in the Supreme Court, which holds a special “election appeals” process, while a ban on an individual candidate automatically requires approval by the Supreme Court if it is to take effect.

Arab political sources described the disqualification of the Balad-United Arab List slate as evidence of racism and the delegitimization of Arab society in Israel and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party of anti-Arab incitement.

MK David Bitan petitioned on behalf of Likud against Balad-United Arab List, and Yisrael Beitenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman petitioned against Cassif. Petitioners claimed both lists and Cassif supported terror and ruled out Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state. Mendelblit said he opposed all the petitions.

Ben-Gvir presented the committee with findings he claimed should disqualify the Hadash-Ta’al slate. He mentioned a call from Ta’al chairman Ahmed Tibi to annul the Declaration of Independence, and quoted a Facebook post by Ayman Odeh, the head of Hadash.

In the post, written following a meeting with Fatah member Marwan Barghouti at an Israeli prison, Odeh compared Barghouti to Nelson Mandela. “The meeting was moving, as well as speaking to a leader who shares my political stances.” Ben-Gvir noted Odeh defined Ahed Tamimi as an “excellent girl,” and said she showed “legitimate resistance.” Tamimi, a Palestinian teenage girl, served time in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier in 2018.

Cassif was accused of equating Israel and the Israel Defense Forces with the Nazi regime, and it was noted that he called to fight “Judeo-Nazism,” expressed support for changing the anthem, and called Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “Neo-Nazi scum.” He did not attend the session, but was called after committee chairman Justice Hanan Melcer insisted on his presence.

“I come from an academic background, and my area of expertise is among other things the subject of Fascism, Nazis and nationalism in general,” said Cassif, explaining his comments. “When I speak to a friend or write a post as a private person, I use metaphors. When I used the aforementioned terms – they were metaphors.”

In an interview last month, Cassif said Israel conducts a “creeping genocide” against the Palestinian people.

The top candidate on the slate, Mansour Abbas, said he had expected that most of the representatives of the Zionist parties on the election committee would support the move to disqualify the slate, but added: “We are a democratic Arab list that is seeking to represent Arab society with dignity and responsibility.”

Commenting on Benny Gantz, the leader of Kahol Lavan, which is ahead of Likud in recent polls, Abbas said: “There’s no difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Gantz.”

Mtanes Shehadeh, who is No. 2 on the Balad-United Arab list slate said the decision to disqualify his slate was expected because he said the Central Election Committee has a right-wing majority and “is also controlled by a fascist, right-wing ideology.”

His Balad faction, Shehadeh said, “presents a challenge to democracy in Israel” and challenges what he called “the right-wing regime that is controlling the country.”

Sources from the Balad-United Arab list slate said there is in an urgent need to strip the Central Election Committee of the authority to disqualify candidates and parties from running in elections. The considerations that go into the decision are purely political, the sources said.

Balad chairman Jamal Zahalka said the decision to disqualify the slate sends a “hostile message to the Arab public” in the country. “We will petition the High Court of Justice against the decision and in any event, we will not change our position, even if we are disqualified.”

Earlier Wednesday, the Central Elections Committee approved Ben Ari, the chairman of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, to run for the Knesset.

Meretz, Stav Shaffir (Labor) and the Reform Movement, who filed the petition to the Central Elections Committee to ban Ben Ari from running for Knesset, all said they would file a petition with the High Court of Justice against the committee’s decision.

Prior to deliberations, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit submitted his opinion to the comittee, stating he was in favor of disqualifying Ben Ari from running for Knesset on the grounds of incitement to racism.

In November 2017, for instance, at an annual memorial for Rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben Ari gave a speech in which he said of Israeli Arabs, “Let’s give them another 100,000 dunams [of land] and affirmative action, maybe they’ll love us. In the end, yes, they’ll love us when we’re slaughtered.”

In May 2018, Ben Ari gave another speech in which he said, “The Arabs of Haifa aren’t different in any way from the Arabs of Gaza. How are they different? In that they’re here, enemies from within. They’re waging war against us here, within the state. And this is called – it has a name – it’s called a fifth column. We need to call the dog by its name. They’re our enemies. They want to destroy us. Of course there are loyal Arabs, but you can count them – one percent or less than one percent.”

#Hadash

The migrants aren’t the problem- Israel’s racism is -
By Gideon Levy | Dec. 22, 2013
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.564683

Israeli public opinion is being shaped by a grotesque Knesset member who has become a joke and a former MK whose party didn’t get enough votes to make it into the legislature. If it weren’t so sad, we’d be laughing until we cried. But now our tears should be over the unbelievable fact that these two marginal characters, these clowns, MK Miri Regev (Likud) and Michael Ben Ari, have, with their hateful incitement, succeeded in dictating the national agenda on the issue of African migrants and asylum seekers. From now on we’ll have to choose: Either you support the refugees, or you support the state (and the longtime residents of south Tel Aviv). Who decided that? Regev and Ben Ari.

We’re all Regev and Ben Ari now. The consensus reflects their racist spirit and populist language. It’s Israel vs. the migrants. Some 50,000-60,000 Africans have turned into a national problem and existential threat.

Xenophobes exist in every country, but they achieve legitimacy in very few of them, and in fewer still has their discourse become government policy. From their heights Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has never been caught expressing compassion, and Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who seems to enjoy being cruel, project the kind of attitude that in Europe comes from down below, from gangs of skinheads. The sad and inevitable conclusion is that Israeli society is so tainted by racism that the agitators of the extreme right reflect its spirit almost without question.

It is indisputable that in most hearts – assuming there are any left – the perception has taken hold that these unfortunate Africans must be gotten rid of, in any way or by any means. The attitude is that they aren’t really human beings, that they cannot be rehabilitated in Israel and there is no place for them here, that they bring us only crime and disease. We believe it’s permissible to abuse them, humiliate them and increase their misery without limit; that they can be incarcerated without trial; that we can ignore international conventions and obtusely and cruelly ignore their humanitarian plight. We think it’s proper to appoint a “project manager” to arrange their expulsion and set up a “lodging facility” to detain them until the national deportation initiative succeeds and our camp will once again be pure.

The most diabolical plan of all is the “third country” solution – to throw them at some African state whose leaders will be bribed to take them in. What’s the problem with sending a Sudanese to Uganda? He’s black, they’re black, they’ll work it out.

This time the issue is not security, Israel’s state religion. Nor are still talking about a flood of refugees, because the border with Egypt has been closed. So the only explanation for this disgraceful treatment lies in the national psyche. The migrants’ color is the problem. A million immigrants from Russia, a third of them non-Jews, some of whom were also found to have a degree of alcohol and crime in their blood, were not a problem. Tens of thousands of Africans are the ultimate threat.

From the way people talk you’d think the area surrounding Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station was an upscale neighborhood, with peaceful streets and green lawns, until the blacks came and trashed it. You’d think that if not for them Israel would have no crime and no social problems. Because that how xenophobia works, all of society’s ills are blamed on the foreigners. No one cares about the facts, that’s what incitement’s all about.

The Knesset Research and Information Center published two studies, in 2010 and 2011, showing that the crime rate among the migrants is below the national average. So what? And while it’s true that since then this crime rate has doubled, what did we expect? That we could prevent them from working and living with dignity, and crime wouldn’t increase? That we could shut them up in ghettos and treat them like human shadows and they wouldn’t take to the streets? Where would they go, if not to the disadvantaged neighborhoods, when the state bars them from working? Israel is denying them a living? Can a state that took in millions of immigrants and imports tens of thousands of foreign workers, but which mistreats African migrants be anything but racist? Look at its attitude toward Ethiopian immigrants, and you’ll understand.

It’s Israel that made the African migrants a problem. That’s what incitement does. Since the border is closed and international conventions bar their deportation, the state should allow those already here to work, to rebuild their lives, and offer them the prospect of becoming citizens through a gradual, careful process. That’s how it’s done in normal countries.

Israel is too small, too weak to do this? Nonsense, merely too racist.