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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Western embassies pushing Arabs to vote, says Joint List’s counsel
2015-02-15
[IsraelTimes] 'If Herzog supports Zoabi disqualification, he can forget about being prime minister,' warns Hassan Jabareen

Officials in the American and European embassies in Israel are advising Arab leaders to encourage their community to participate more significantly in the upcoming national elections in order to hinder racist legislation
That should be "racist" in scare quotes...
in the next Knesset, a senior Arab human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
 activist told The Times of Israel on Monday.

Hassan Jabareen, founder and head of Arab civil rights group Adalah and legal counsel to controversial MK Hanin Zoabi and her party the Joint Arab List, said that Western diplomats serving in Israel are concerned about the future status of Israel's Arab minority -- 20 percent of the country -- if a right-wing Knesset is elected on March 17.
How kind of them, to be sure.
"When [diplomats] in embassies in Israel speak to Arab public officials they always say that a higher voter turnout will increase our representation [in the Knesset], which could help block racist laws against us," Jabareen told The Times of Israel. "You hear these things from any of the EU embassies, from the US [embassy], and from people you sit with from the Paleostinian Authority."
Oooooooh, kind and concerned!
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has warned of an increase in anti-democratic legislation
...in which warnings the definition of democratic is curiously undefined...
over the past four years, with many laws targeting the Arab minority in particular. Jabareen told journalists in Jerusalem last week that the recent wave of anti-democratic legislation
See above
is the highest it's been since the 1950s; pushing even the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel to break its longstanding call for an election boycott ahead of the March vote.

Jabareen has personally been told by Western diplomats that the newly formed Joint List -- uniting the Arab parties of Balad, Hadash and Ra'am-Ta'al -- should win more than the combined number of seats its constituent parties hold in the current Knesset.
Why?
"We used to hear this in the past too, but more now," he said.

The US embassy in Israel denied that it was urging Arabs to vote: "These reports are untrue. The United States is firmly committed to the principle of non-intervention in Israeli elections."
The US embassy in Israel denied that it was urging Arabs to vote: "These reports are untrue. The United States is firmly committed to the principle of non-intervention in Israeli elections."

David Kriss, a front man for the EU delegation to Israel, also said the EU's unequivocal policy was not to intervene in Israeli politics ahead of elections.

"EU policy is to remain neutral in these elections and not intervene in them in any way, shape or form," he told The Times of Israel.

"EU policy is to remain neutral in these elections and not intervene in them in any way, shape or form,"
As for the Paleostine Liberation Organization, its official position is also to stay out of Israel's domestic politics, Jabareen said. But on an individual level, PLO members are also increasingly urging Arab Israelis to vote.

"It's wishful thinking," he said. "They're happy that there's a Joint [Arab] List and that it has [good] chances The longstanding understanding between the PLO and Arabs in Israel is that neither side intervenes in the politics of the other."

'If Herzog supports disqualifying Zoabi, he can kiss the premiership goodbye'
The announcement last week by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni's Zionist Camp that it supports the disqualification of MK Hanin Zoabi over inflammatory public statements has greatly angered the Joint Arab List.

Even as Israel's Army Radio reported Monday that the Zionist Camp would defer its decision until hearing the position of the attorney general on Thursday, the Joint List issued a statement Monday calling Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "two sides of the same coin." Zoabi posted a video to the website of Channel 2 news insisting that there was no real difference between Herzog, Livni and Netanyahu with regards to the Arab population in Israel and the future of the grinding of the peace processor.

"The Zionist Camp is proving yet again that there is no Zionism that isn't racist," she said. They miss no opportunity to prove to us that there's no difference between the extreme right and the center."

Jabareen, too, was unequivocal about the Arab List's response to a decision by the Zionist Camp to go ahead with the disqualification bid.

"If Herzog votes for the disqualification of Hanin Zoabi, he will be voting for his own disqualification as a candidate for prime minister," Jabareen said. "He can sit home or try to maintain his number of seats, but he won't be prime minister. This is a red line; for Arabs he would be joining the extreme right. In politics, national minority groups must also be respected."
Posted by:trailing wife

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