In what has become a pre-election ritual the Israeli Knesset’s Central Elections Committee (CEC) began proceedings today on calls from the ruling coalition to ban a myriad of MPs and parties from contesting reelction.
Today’s only successful ban came against Arab MP Haneen Zoabi, who was on the Mavi Marmara aid ship the Israeli Navy attacked. The right-wing MPs on the committee argued that this amounted to “supporting terrorism” with Likud MP Danny Danon arguing that “Democracy must have its limits” and Zoabi’s place is prison.
Efforts to ban all Arab parties from contesting the election narrowly failed, and the next round of discussions will focus on calls to ban the Israeli religious right for “discriminating against women.”
Officials expressed confidence that Zoabi’s ban would stand, but despite the CEC’s tendency to ban candidates and parties before virtually every vote, the Israeli High Court has almost uniformly overturned those bans. The only ban which has ever stood up in court was the 1988 banning of Rabbi Meir Kahane for overtly calling for the mass expulsion of all non-Jews from the country.
The only democracy in the middle east.
Democracy …. 🙂 Funny . You just made me laugh so hard . Thanks bud .
You are more than welcome Mr. File. Did you hear the one about Israel being the most Moral country in the world?
Nazi Germany was a 'democracy' too. They had elections. And everything Hitler did was 'legal' under German law.
One of the things we need to do is to remind people that 'democracy' means more than having a sham election every once in awhile. 'Democracy' means the soveriegn power of the state is in the hands of the people, and they are allowed to use it and exercise it as they see fit. There are few democracies in the world today.