Summary
Amendment No. 44 to Basic Law: The Knesset, passed 20 July 2016, allowing 90 of 120 MKs to terminate a serving MK’s membership for incitement to racism or support for an armed struggle against Israel, which Adalah’s Discriminatory Laws Database presents as a politically motivated expulsion power, bypassing the criminal-conviction removal pathway, that chills minority representatives (Discriminatory Laws Database, lines 981-1094).
Details
- Article 42a(c)(1): “The Knesset is entitled, by a majority of 90 Members of the Knesset, to decide to terminate the membership of a Knesset Member if it has determined that what is said in article 7a(a)(2) or (3) regarding a candidate, applies to him, after that Knesset was elected.” Under 42a(c)(2) the decision is adopted on a House Committee proposal adopted by three-quarters of its members, at the request of 70 MKs, at least 10 of whom are in parliamentary groups not party to agreements requiring support of the Government. The Article 7a grounds are (2) incitement to racism and (3) support for an armed struggle by an enemy state, or of a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel (lines 1005-1017).
- Neither “support” nor “incitement” is defined in the law, in Adalah’s account, and the entry stresses the chilling effect of its mere existence, including on speaking for a state defending all citizens’ rights equally or for Palestinian self-determination (lines 995-1001).
- Context given: the 2013 bill known as the “Zoabi Law”, introduced by then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked against MK Haneen Zoabi after she spoke against the killing of ten humanitarian activists in the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid; and the bill’s 2016 resurfacing after three Joint List MKs met families of killed East Jerusalem Palestinians to help recover withheld bodies. MK Mickey Rosenthal is quoted: “It’s a law of two words: Arabs out.” (lines 1021-1025).
- MK Aida Touma-Suleiman told Amnesty International the law acts as “a sword dangled over our heads by members of the Knesset who oppose us politically” (line 1041).
- Legal challenge: HCJ 10214/16, MK Yousef Jabareen et al. v. The Knesset, filed by Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI); on 27 May 2018 the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the petition and upheld the law (lines 1045-1047).
Related pages
Discriminatory Laws Database, Adalah, Knesset, Israeli Supreme Court, Self-determination