Joint List MK Not Saying Killing Jews Legitimate, But Killing Jews Legitimate

Zoabi assured reporters that she should not be misunderstood as endorsing violence, while she merely sought to endorse violence.

Jerusalem, May 30 – A prominent legislator from the mostly-Arab alliance of parties in the Knesset stopped short of calling mortar and rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli communities an acceptable course of action for Palestinians, but insisted mortar and rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli communities is an acceptable course of action for Palestinians.

MK Haneen Zoabi, who has in the past courted controversy for staunch anti-Israel rhetoric, sought to assuage concerns today that she had justified Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians such as the mortar attacks on Tuesday that included dozens of shells and injured 4 people, as well as hit a preschool just before the children arrived. Zoabi assured reporters that she should not be misunderstood as condoning or endorsing such wanton violence, while she merely sought to condone or endorse such wanton violence.

“I’m not saying it’s OK for Palestinians to resort to potentially deadly attacks against Israel under the rubric of ‘resistance to occupation,’ but it’s OK for Palestinians to target Israelis for deadly attacks as a form of legitimate resistance to occupation,” she stated this morning.

“Many right-wing allies of the war-criminal prime minister and in the media have tried to twist my words as if I am trying to side with those who deliberately target children and other noncombatants,” she continued. “Such bad actors distort what I have actually said and continue to say, which is that I support those who deliberately target children and other noncombatants as well as use their own children and noncombatants as human shields and hope those noncombatants get killed by IDF operations so Israel can be made to look evil for defending its citizens. I’m not saying Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state, but Israel should be dissolved as a Jewish state and reconstituted as a state of all its citizens in which Jews eventually disappear. I hope I have made myself understood.”

Zoabi took the opportunity to castigate the press for other instances in which, she alleged, they misrepresented her statements or behavior. “When I went on board the Mavi Marmara [in 2011] to show solidarity with the poor besieged people of Gaza, you all portrayed that as siding with the terrorists who govern Gaza,” she proclaimed. “But what you failed to mention was that I also refused to call the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the summer of 2014 ‘terrorism’ or to unequivocally condemn the act.”

“I’m not saying you’re lousy at your jobs as journalists, but you sure are lousy at your job as journalists.”

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