Joint List MK Says Labor Killed Arab MKs, Stole Their Seats

“In fact the term ‘Knesset’ is merely a corruption of an indigenous Arabic name for the region, Knish.”

Jerusalem, September 7 – Joint Arab List Member of Knesset Jamal Zahalka laced into lawmakers from the Labor Party this afternoon, saying that they had massacred Arab legislators and stolen their seats in the Knesset.

Zahalka directed his words at MK Stav Shaffir, who sparked his ire by not smiling in greeting as the two passed in the hallway outside the plenum chamber. “You and your Labor Party forebears built your Knesset delegation on the ruins of Arab seats you destroyed,” he said. “Go back to the European Parliament.”

Zahalka’s remarks came amid the backdrop of tensions within the Opposition over an impending vote on the Coalition’s plan for natural gas resources. Zionist Union lawmakers uniformly oppose the plan in its current form, but other Opposition elements are less vehement in their objections, and one Joint List delegate implied that his party could be persuaded to vote in favor in exchange for various budgetary allocations. Perhaps to allay fears that he had moderated his position on the illegitimacy of Jewish sovereignty, the Balad Party legislator felt compelled to assert that there were no Jewish Knesset members before the establishment of Israel, and that Labor and other Zionist parties’ representatives could only have attained their positions over the dead bodies of Arabs.

Fellow Joint List legislator Ahamd Tibi exapnded on his colleague’s accusation, saying that the Jewish-held Knesset seats were built on the charred remains of Al-Lodofissis, where hundreds of his ancestors came from. “The Zionist legislators mercilessly leveled the sacred village of Al-Lodafissis and exiled whomever they did not murder,” railed Tibi. “In fact the term ‘Knesset’ is merely a corruption of an indigenous Arabic name for the region, Knish.”

“My great-grandmother came from Al-Lodafissis,” continued Tibi. “Her ancestors lived there, maintaining a legislative seat, since time immemorial, until the Labor Zionists came and drove out the peaceful residents, and claimed those seats as their own.” He stressed that any seats in the parliament once held by Jewish parties but now in the hands of an Arab party is considered “liberated” from foreign control.

When challenged to produce evidence that any legislature existed in the country before 1949, Tibi and Zahalka berated a reporter for denying them the right to maintain their narrative, accusing her of racism, and saying she should smile more.