On Thursday, October 8, Palestinian lawmaker and citizen of Israel Sami Abu Shehadeh, chairman of the Balad/Tajammu’ party, which seeks a democratic state for all its citizens, was effectively barred by the Israeli Supreme Court from running in the coming Israeli elections on October 27.
I say “effectively” because the court faced him with an ultimatum: resign, or we will confirm your disqualification [by the Knesset Elections Committee] the next day.
The story encapsulates the limits of discourse for Palestinians in Israel, even when they seek to be incorporated in ‘democracy’. The most important thing for Israel’s self-image is to see itself, and portray itself, as both Jewish and democratic. The Knesset’s Basic Law article 7A stipulates that candidates will be barred from running on the basis of:
- Negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;
- Incitement to racism;
- support for armed struggle by a hostile state or a terrorist organization against the State of Israel.
Enter Sami Abu Shehadeh. The campaign against him was centered primarily around the third point, and a narrative constructed by Israeli politicians that he supported Hamas based on an article he wrote on October 8, 2023.
The article
The disqualification case against Abu Shehadeh rests on a single article published on October 8, 2023, that appraised the logic of the Hamas-led attack dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” As Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal center in Israel, makes clear, the article “sought to examine their political context and contains no call for violence.”
The centrist head of the Yashar party, Gadi Eisenkot (who currently appears to be Netanyahu’s and Likud’s best-polling rival), was most influential in inciting against Abu Shehadeh. The devil is in the details.
In backing the effort to disqualify Abu Shehadeh, the Yashar party accused the article of describing the Hamas attack as “an important historic event militarily, politically, and strategically,” and as saying that “if small, besieged Gaza managed to do this, and on this scale, others can do so more effectively and easily.”
Yashar summarized: “Support for the armed struggle of a terrorist organization against Israel is grounds for disqualifying a candidate. In our view, Abu Shehadeh crossed that line.”
But if one reads Abu Shehadeh’s article through, it becomes clear that this is a major distortion (I have provided the full text in English, translated from the original Arabic, here).
The event was historic militarily, politically, and strategically, and that is an indisputable fact. But as to the last quote, it comes from another section altogether, and here it is important to get the context:
“The third observation concerns the comparison with the October 1973 War; what has transpired is vastly different from that conflict in every sense and dimension. While the element of surprise is indeed a shared factor—underscoring the crucial point that Israel and its intelligence agencies are merely human and do not know everything—it is also possible to prevent them from infiltrating our states, parties, and political movements. This is achievable provided the will exists and we organize ourselves correctly. Moreover, if tiny, besieged Gaza could accomplish this—and on such a scale—then others can certainly do so even more effectively and simply.”
This speaks simply of an element of surprise. Shehadeh is clearly extrapolating this element to the larger paradigm of “states, parties and political movements,” where prevention of Israeli infiltration is certainly always a major issue.
Yashar’s conclusion that this constitutes “support for the armed struggle of a terrorist organization against Israel” is completely a political opinion.
Abu Shehadeh claimed in his defense that he “never called for violence, did not support the events of October 7 and [does] not justify them,” but to no avail.
It is worth noting that Gadi Eisenkot’s own Dahiya Doctrine is a doctrine of massive state terror which has been operationalized in repeated Gaza onslaughts and the current genocide – and I think he should be disqualified and actually sent to The Hague for trial. But that’s how it works in the apartheid state.
The disqualification of Abu Shehadeh had an unusually wide backing – including from the State attorney, from the judge leading the committee, and from the furthest left on the Zionist spectrum – The Democrats.
The kangaroo court
Even more egregious than the disqualification itself was the Supreme Court discussion on October 1. Here, Shehadeh was being taunted and the campaign against him was blatantly clear.
Here is one exchange from those proceedings:
Judge Alex Stein: “You have many publications in English. Maybe you can show me one article in which you wrote that Hamas is a terror organization.”
Abu Shehadeh: “There is no such article.”
Stein: “What Abu Shehadeh is saying is cheap talk. A person, when they have no more to lose – will say anything. Show me once where Abu-Shehadeh said, when he had something to lose – something else. Show me one article in English, where he called Hamas “a terror organization”, show me once where he claimed that acts are ‘terror’. He has tens of articles. Is there such an article?”
In Israel’s highest court, Abu Shehadeh is being mocked and derided for not using the political term “terror organization” to describe Hamas. It cannot be required that a serious person like Sami Abu Shehadeh apply the political term “terror organization”, which has no legal meaning in the international laws of war. He could just as well call Israel a “terror state”, and I would personally be fine with that, but it becomes a question of whether one would engage in hyperbole.
So the judge is actually inciting against Abu Shehadeh with hyperbole and, in my view, should resign immediately, but that’s obviously not going to happen. On the other hand, this is precisely what the panel of judges eventually proposed Shehadeh do.
Abu Shehadeh’s pleas for the court to recognize his impeccable record as a lawmaker were to no avail. Abu Shehadeh:
“I have promoted in the Knesset matters and laws regarding the handicapped. All my life, I have dealt with human rights, also with Jewish lawmakers. I request of you [the ability] to continue.”
In the afternoon, court President Yitzhak Amit confirmed that the panel of nine judges reached a consensus that Abu Shehadeh’s article is “outrageous and abhorrent”. He said they were poised to accept the disqualification, so they gave Abu Shehadeh an ultimatum: resign, or be disqualified.
A court-ordered disqualification would have set a precedent for a Palestinian lawmaker since the disqualification law (Knesset law, amendment 7A) was established. Abu Shehadeh thus opted to withdraw his candidacy, “to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that could set a dangerous legal precedent with grave consequences for the already limited space for Palestinian political participation in the Knesset,” as his legal defense from Adalah stated.
This is the state of affairs. Israeli ministers who have incited genocide, actually commanded it in real time, sadistically bragged about their systemic torture of Palestinian hostages, even Democrat leaders who called for the starvation of the whole of Gaza (like the mentioned Democrats leader Yair Golan) – they go free and stand for office. But just utter a word about resistance to that – and you’re a terror supporter.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir say the judge didn’t go far enough
Minister Bezalel Smotrich of Religious Zionism, who serves as de facto governor of the occupied West Bank, who just recently called for a “war” on the West Bank and “to do there what we did in Gaza”, charged the court, and particularly its President, for going soft on Abu Shehadeh (since they didn’t confirm the disqualification outright). Smotrich said,
“Yitzhak Amit doesn’t want, and is unable to, write a simple verdict which tells terror-supporters, who support armed struggle against the state of Israel, like the despicable Abu Shehadeh, who supported the worst massacre that happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust, that they are disqualified from running for the Knesset, and instead pleads to him that he would resign.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of Jewish Power intoned likewise:
“We promised, we fulfilled! I am pleased that our struggle led to the resignation from the Knesset of Sami Abu Shehadeh, after the things he wrote and his support of Hamas a day after October 7. Nonetheless, I regret that the Supreme Court has allowed him to resign without a verdict being handed down.”
Sami Abu Shehadeh’s political fate was sealed, at least as far as coming elections are concerned. He had to decide whether to let the court do it, or do it for the court, and he opted for the latter, out of a calculation that involved future consideration of others.
Abu Shehadeh is clearly one of the most morally courageous politicians in Israel – light years away in stature from those genocidal monsters across the Zionist spectrum. But they were looking for political blood, and Sami Abu Shehadeh is their symbolic lamb of terror.
