The Knesset Central Elections Committee is set to disqualify Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (National Democratic Assembly – Balad) from running in the upcoming elections. If the High Court of Justice allows such a decision to stand, it would be the first time a Knesset member was disqualified since Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach fascist movement was banned from the Knesset in 1988.

Zoabi took part in the 2010 peace flotilla that aimed to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza. She sailed aboard the Mavi Marmara, the ship where clashes between well-trained Israeli military commandos and activists claimed the lives of nine Turkish activists. On Sunday, a petition seeking to disqualify Zoabi was submitted by the committee’s Deputy Chairman MK Ofir Akunis (Likud) to the committee’s chairman, Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. The request had been signed by all the extreme-right of the Central Election Committee’s 36 members. At present, a majority of committee members favor Zoabi’s disqualification. Should she be disqualified, she can appeal the decision to the High Court of Justice.

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For her part, MK Zoabi was outraged at the initiative to disqualify her. “The Right, headed by Likud-Beytenu, is the embodiment of a dangerous form of fascism that seeks to destroy anyone looking to undermine its power. I am not afraid to shake the fascist Right’s hold on power, not just on behalf of the Arab population, but also on behalf of Jews who are afraid to go up against the brazen fascists who have marked the National Democratic Assembly and myself as targets for elimination. We will not give them the satisfaction,” Zoabi said.

Meanwhile, all right-wing factions on Sunday expressed support for the initiative to remove Zoabi’s name from the list of candidates for the next Knesset. On the other side of the political spectrum, the communist leader MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) expressed forceful opposition to the move. “I believe there is no cause for disqualifying her,” he said. “The attorney-general rejected all requests to serve an indictment against her in the Mavi Marmara affair. So how can MK Akunis convict her without a trial and deny her a citizen’s basic right to be elected to the Knesset?”

Until this point, all the proposals to disqualify various Arab MKs and Knesset Arab factions have been rejected upon appeal by the High Court of Justice. Meanwhile, extreme-right Elections Committee Deputy Chairman MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beytenu) has submitted a request to disqualify the entire National Democratic Assembly party from taking part in the elections.