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Arab Israeli events selected to snub Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the Knesset on Sunday night time, with just one Arab lawmaker out of 10 displaying up.
Joint Listing chief Ayman Odeh skipped the speech, as did the 2 different lawmakers from his Hadash faction, occasion officers stated. A spokesperson for Odeh didn’t reply to a request for remark.
“Our place is that NATO and its chief America imposed this warfare,” stated Mansour Dahamsheh, the Hadash occasion’s secretary-general, in a cellphone name with The Occasions of Israel.
For the reason that Nineteen Nineties, a number of former Soviet states have joined the alliance, which Russia claims was a provocation and a menace to its nationwide safety. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine forswear becoming a member of NATO as a situation for ending its invasion.
Zelensky addressed the Knesset by Zoom on Sunday night time in a speech vital of Israeli coverage towards the Russian invasion. In remarks that repeatedly invoked the Holocaust, Zelensky pleaded with lawmakers to do extra for Ukrainians, together with offering superior weaponry and air protection methods to Kyiv.
The overwhelming majority of Israeli lawmakers turned up, with some even patching in from Indonesia and France. Solely the Arab events boycotted the Ukrainian chief’s speech.
The Joint Listing’s Ta’al faction’s two parliamentarians — Ahmad Tibi and Osama Sa’adi — watched on Channel 12, quite than be part of the Zoom, a Ta’al occasion spokesperson stated. Nor was Balad’s sole MK, Sami Abou Shehadeh, in attendance.
Solely Ra’am parliamentarian Walid Taha joined the Zoom convention from the Islamist occasion. Occasion chief Mansour Abbas was talking at a convention in Haifa similtaneously the speech. A spokesperson for the Ra’am faction didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The united Joint Listing was as soon as the standard-bearer of the Arab Israeli neighborhood within the Knesset. However Ra’am broke off from it final yr and efficiently joined the governing coalition, leaving the remaining three factions within the opposition.
Probably the most virulent opposition to Zelensky’s speech got here from the Hadash occasion. The hard-left Communist occasion traditionally had ties to the Soviet Union, with many members finding out or working within the bloc.
“Very unhappy that good leftists are being deceived after false propaganda — and that they even count on my associates and me to toe the road with the lies being fed to us,” Hadash lawmaker Ofer Cassif stated on Twitter.
“I don’t take sides in pointless wars that hurt harmless civilians, strengthen these in energy, and enrich the lords of warfare,” added Cassif, the occasion’s sole Jewish parliamentarian.
Hadash’s choice to boycott sparked widespread criticism, together with from fellow leftists.
“Nothing can justify boycotting the speech of a democratically elected chief who’s representing folks below savage assault by a totalitarian nuclear energy,” left-wing human rights lawyer Michael Sfard wrote in a tweet.
In 2017, Hadash lawmakers drew criticism for declining to sentence Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad by identify after his regime used chemical weapons in opposition to civilians. Some occasion members even praised Assad’s conquest of rebel-held areas through the Syrian Civil Warfare.
“My coronary heart aches for the youngsters murdered in Syria, simply because it aches over the pictures of youngsters murdered in Yemen or Gaza,” Odeh stated, with out instantly stating the Assad regime was behind their deaths.
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