Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh has long claimed that he was shot by Israeli police at Umm al-Hiran in 2017. But the police manipulated evidence, suggesting he was hit by stones or shrapnel. A new documentary shows how they hid the critical footage.

Benjamin Netanyahu became the object of ridicule today as he fought for his political life. Ayman Odeh mocked the prime minister on the Knesset floor claiming that Netanyahu offered him an end to the occupation and to acknowledge the Nakba in exchange for Odeh supporting his immunity from prosecution over on-going criminal probes. 

The centrist Blue White opposition to Netanyahu’s Likud organized a demonstration in Tel Aviv to ‘defend democracy’. But it was rife with militant symbolism and orientalist mockery, and it marginalized Palestinian voices, as usual. Notably, protesters wore fezzes to say Israel shouldn’t become Turkey. It was surely lost on the demonstrators that many Arabs wear fezzes, including Arab Jews.

Benny Gantz said he is the next prime minister of Israel, but incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu said the right wing has won again after polls closed in the Israeli elections. Gantz’s party is polling ahead of Netanyahu’s, but early analysis suggests it will be harder for Gantz’s Blue and White to form a governing coalition.

The unprecedented criticism of an Israeli prime minister by AIPAC and the splitting of the Palestinian parties into two lists may represent Israeli centrist Benny Gantz’s only road to knocking off Benjamin Netanyahu in April elections. Netanyahu is already calling Gantz an “Arab-lover” while Gantz has criticized Netanyahu for endangering Israel’s crown jewels, its ties to the U.S. government.

There are still a few weeks before head of the Joint List Ayman Odeh begins his first term in Israel’s parliament, yet he has already led a protest across the country. This past weekend Odeh led the “March for Recognition” with hundreds of Bedouins who live in unrecognized villages. The 130 kilometer trek from the southern Negev desert to Jerusalem officially ended on President Reuven Rivlin’s doorstep Sunday afternoon.

Months ago questions were raised if, at all, there would be any Arab representatives in the next Knesset. Then the groups unified under a single banner headed by Ayman Odeh, 41, a first time Knesset candidate from Haifa who started his career in public office at the age of 23 on Haifa’s city council. Now the long road is coming to and end and the Joint Arab List is the third largest party in the country with the potential, for the first time, to influence the outcome of elections.