Arab legislator to chair Knesset committee, undeterred by incitement
The appointment of Arab Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman to head the Welfare and Labor Committee generated racist reactions and incitement to hatred, but she is not upset.
On March 23, two Arab Joint List lawmakers were appointed to head Knesset committees: Knesset member Mansour Abbas, the head of the Islamic Ra’am party, will serve as the chair of a special committee to tackle crime in Arab communities, and Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman will chair the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee.
Touma-Suleiman’s appointment generated racist reactions not only on the part of right-wing Knesset members, but also from organizations advocating for disabled Israelis and bereaved families, inculcated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends with the message that Arab lawmakers are “terror supporters.” Minister of Social Equality Gila Gamliel went so far as to say in a television interview, “An Arab woman from the Joint List cannot head the Welfare and Labor Committee.” Does the minister of social equality not realize the irony?
To Gamliel’s credit, in 2017 she was instrumental in pushing through an unprecedented 15 billion shekel ($4.3 billion) five-year plan for the economic development of the Arab population, an initiative on which she cooperated with Joint List Knesset members Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi. Why, then, does she now recoil at the appointment of an Arab colleague to chair a Knesset committee? Her reaction may be an expression of the constitutional crisis in which Israel is mired, as reflected in Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein's decision this week to violate a Supreme Court order to convene the plenary to choose his successor. Gamliel’s behavior also reflects the political right’s persistent delegitimization of the Joint List, made all the more intense by its electoral successes in the recent election cycles. On March 2, the Joint List won 15 Knesset seats, making it instrumental in blocking the formation of a Netanyahu-led right-wing/ultra-Orthodox government coalition. In its frustration over the loss of its Knesset majority, the right is taking up the ugly weapon of racism.
Gamliel’s remark testifies to Netanyahu’s success in imbuing his followers with the message that members of the Arab Joint List do not count as part of the center-left Knesset majority, which garnered 61 seats in the 120-member legislature in the March 2 elections. As Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz “explained,’’ the democratically elected representatives of Israel’s 21% Arab minority are nothing but “terrorists in suits.”
