The evening of March 5, Housing Minister Uri Ariel’s spokesman sent a lengthy email message to political correspondents. The inviting subject line read: “Watch: Minister Ariel tells the Arab Knesset members, ‘We can do without you.'” The message included a link to a clip documenting the ugly confrontation that had taken place several hours earlier in the Knesset plenary between the minister from the extreme-right HaBayit HaYehudi party and a group of Knesset members from Hadash and the Arab factions.
MK Mohammad Barakeh (Photo: Al Ittihad)
Knesset member Mohammad Barakeh, the head of Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) who got caught up in this altercation with Ariel, says he has red lines. In a talk with Al-Monitor he says that from the moment he understood that these incidents serve the Knesset members of the right, he tried to avoid taking part in them. “They make a living from this, and in recent years I tend not to get dragged in. This is obviously their entry pass into the heart of the average Israeli racist. Liberman has been doing it for years. He curses the Arabs with extraordinary aptitude and makes whole campaigns out of this.”
So why did you play into Ariel’s hands this time?
Barakeh: When all is said and done, I’m not a puppet, and when a government minister stands up and says what he did, I have to answer him, because I also represent people. When Ariel said he supported what Liberman wrote on Facebook, I told him there were no Hamas people in the Knesset except for Uri Ariel, who is a radical, right-wing Hamasnik. So he was insulted that someone would talk to a minister this way. I know that there are times when Knesset members from the Arab side and Knesset members from the right coordinate some of these shows. I won’t say any more.
Were you also approached?
Barakeh: I also got such lewd offers. One Knesset member came to me and said: ‘Come into the plenary. I’m going to say some important things to which you may want to react.’ I told him to go to hell. I didn’t come to the Knesset as a performer. [Former Knesset speaker] Rubi Rivlin is also very right wing, but he abides by civil standards. These other guys, they’re willing to trample everything, to the point of bloodshed, to instigate debates about Al-Aqsa that spark riots and bloodshed, only because it serves them.
You’ve been in the Knesset for 15 years. Is this phenomenon getting worse?
Barakeh: It’s been there since the days of [late Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin, but it’s simply gaining ground and politicians on the right have learned to make use of it. Look at Liberman’s political record. Whenever he experienced a drop in support, he made some radical comment about the Arabs. I remember when I was the swing vote on the “evacuation-compensation” bill, Limor Livnat said the vote was legal but not legitimate. That says it all. There are those on the right who think that our very participation in the political game is not legitimate.
Was Liberman the one who undermined your legitimacy as Knesset members?
Barakeh: It started before him. Yitzhak Rabin was the first and last prime minister who formed a government based on the support of the Arab votes. This was the reason that the right wing deemed the government illegitimate. [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s 1996 campaign slogan was: ‘Bibi is good for the Jews.’ Now the right knows that a government with Arab participation is not legitimate, and it also knows full well that the Arab public will never support such a government, and that’s why they take us out of the circle of representation. It’s a political calculation. The result is that since 1996, to this day, Israel is heading toward a declared apartheid.
