Speaking with journalist Amit Segal on Wednesday, as they met at a Conference of Local Governments, MK Dr. Ahmed Tibi was asked if he would recommend the presidential mandate to form a coalition government go to Benny Gantz after elections.

Arutz-7 reports Tibi was also asked: Why the advisor to the late MK Rabbi Meir Kahane HY”D cannot be in Knesset while a former advisor to Yasser Arafat can. (Baruch Marzel of the Otzma Yehudit list was a parliamentary aide to Kahane while Tibi was a senior advisor to Arafat).

Tibi is quoted responding: “The comparison is outrageous. I do not believe in being racist. I think that a Jew defending a racist who speaks of the supremacy of the Jewish race must be ashamed of himself. You say a lot that the Arab MKs are doing everything they can to destroy the state, but whoever promises to appoint Itamar Ben-Givir as a member of the committee for the appointment of judges does the job not in our place but instead of us.”

Can a MK who supports terrorism legitimately be in the Israeli Knesset?
Tibi: “Certainly. They are elected and pass the hurdles placed by the courts and election committee, and compare the mainstream of a national minority with an organization that was declared a terrorist organization and outlawed by the Israeli government and by courts. The comparison is out of place and this is to get out of the moral embarrassment of those who do everything to preserve their chair by bringing the KKK inside the Government of Israel.”

Perhaps you will announce here that in order to fight that government, will you recommend Benny Gantz?
“You are dying for me to say this in order to kill Ganz, and we are invited more often to the [media] studios because they want to hear this statement, and Amit is the emissary of the government, to bring us down. So I say, we want to bring down the right, but I have not yet heard the expression equal rights for the Arab citizens from Gantz. I haven’t heard.”

“I have not heard Yair Lapid say ‘we won’t sit with the Arabs’. Imagine that in Belgium or France, a Belgian or French politician would say, ‘We will not sit with the Jews.’ What would have happened to him? I can understand that he will say, ‘We will not sit with Hadash Ta’al, or the United Arab List-Balad, but with the Arabs it’s terrible, it’s jarring. I call on Jewish politicians to think twice before they talk.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)