MK Zoabi: Israeli combat pilots are no better than Islamic State beheaders

© Knesset Channel

Balad MK Haneen Zoabi in the Knesset.

'MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) equated fighters of Islamic State with Israeli soldiers on Sunday. "They [IS] kill one person at a time with a knife and the IDF at the press of a button [kills] dozens of Palestinians," Zoabi told Channel 2 Online in an interview. Zoabi added that an Israeli pilot "is no less a terrorist than a person who takes a knife and commits a beheading."

Zoabi said she believes that "both are armies of murderers, they have no boundaries and no red lines." Zoabi said the cases of Arab Israelis joining IS do not add up to a trend but rather represent a "very tiny number on the margins" - people who "apparently have no options in life." Zoabi said such people had lost meaning in their lives and adopted a closed, fundamentalist ideology.

"In Iraq and Syria they have their picture taken with a knife and here they have their picture taken with dead bodies and with their bombardments and they also laugh," she said. "The M-16 and the bombardments kill more than a knife."

Zoabi also expressed confidence about her petition to the High Court of Justice against the Knesset Ethics Committee's decision in July to bar her from the plenum and committees for six months, a move that followed statements she made about the three Jewish teens abducted and murdered.

Following Zoabi's likening of the Israel Defense Forces to Islamic State, MK Faina Kirshenbaum (Yisrael Beiteinu) said, "Zoabi knows her days in the Knesset are numbered and soon the era of the immunity that the Knesset granted her will also end. I am sure that in the coming session the Knesset will pass a 'Zoabi law' by a large majority that will disqualify her from her position, as well as from an attempt to run for election in the future."

MK Miri Regev (Likud) called Zoabi "a dangerous enemy to the Israeli public" who should not be in the Knesset. "Zoabi crossed all possible red lines in comparing the IDF to the Islamic State. Her incitement is comparable in its seriousness to the acts of a terrorist who harms innocent people," Regev said. "I suggest that she board a plane straight to Qatar so she can finally be reunited with her close friend Azmi Bishara, or as I have said in the past, "Go to Gaza, you traitor," Regev added, rendering the last words in Arabic.