Two weeks after causing an uproar for saying he didn’t want Arabs in his community pools, Lower Galilee Regional Council leader Moti Dotan has been hit with a NIS 10 million class action lawsuit. The Coalition against Racism filed papers against Dotan at Nazareth’s District Court on Sunday, August 14, reported Al-Ittihad the Arabic-language daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Israel.  The plaintiffs claimed Israel’s entire Arab population was eligible to demand compensation for potential discrimination at the council’s pools.

Interviewed on the Kol Chai radio station on July 28, Dotan, whose council represents several kibbutzim and Jewish towns in the Galilee, said “I don’t hate Arabs, but I don’t want them in my pools. I don’t go to their pools, either.”

Hadash MK Youssef Jabareen, of the Joint List parliamentary faction, called on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to look into Dotan’s publicly declared attitudes and demanded the council chief’s immediate resignation. “The comments by the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council are incitement to racism,” Jabareen said in a statement. “In addition to being morally unacceptable, it is a criminal offense and I ask that the attorney general open a criminal investigation,” he added.