The High Court has rejected an attempt by Israeli Arab Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi of the Balad party to block the parliament from banning her activity.

One after another, the five-member panel of justices scored Zoabi for her claims that she backs non-violence. Zoabi clearly identifed with the Hamas kidnap-murderers of three yeshiva students in Gush Etzion in a broadcast interview on Radio Tel Aviv last June, before it was known that the boys had been murdered.

Zoabi was barred for six months from all Knesset activity other than voting in response to a flurry of complaints from her colleagues — including Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein — about a statement she made regarding the abduction and particularly brutal murder of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Sha’ar  were not guilty of terrorism.

“Is it strange that people living under occupation and living impossible lives, in a situation where Israel kidnaps new prisoners every day, is it strange that they act this way? They are not terrorists. Even if I do not agree with them, they are people who do not see any way open to change their reality, and they are compelled to use means like these until Israel wakes up and sees the suffering, feels the suffering of the other.”

The complaints charging Zoabi with incitement led the Knesset Ethics Committee to ban Zoabi at the end of July from making speeches, submitting legal questions or initiating debates from the plenum or in committee for half a year. It was the maximum punishment the committee was allowed to impose.

On October 7 Zoabi tried to appeal the ruling in committee, calling it a violation of freedom of speech. That effort failed, and the ban was confirmed by the full plenum at the end of October.

However, Zoabi has still won a victory: despite breaking the laws of the state by repeatedly visiting enemy nations and participating in events clearly as an advocate for an enemy entity (the Palestinian Authority), Zoabi has yet to be charged with treason.

Moreover, despite her verbal support for an enemy during wartime in July – when Israel was facing impending conflict with the Hamas terrorist organization, as she obviously knew, being a privileged lawmaker – Zoabi is free.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein ruled in the current case that Zoabi’s statements in July did not constitute criminal incitement.

A five-justice Supreme Court panel verbally attacked Arab Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi during a hearing on her appeal to overturn the Knesset’s banning her for six months for speech that included identifying with the kidnap-murderers of three yeshiva students last June.

The justices’ questioning was unusually political, and the harsh criticism of the rabble-rousing MK suggested that it will uphold the Knesset Ethics Committee’s decision when the court hands down a ruling on her appeal.

One after another, the justices scored Zoabi for her claims that she backs non-violence while identifying with the Hamas kidnap-murders of the yeshiva students in a radio interview last June, before it was known that the boys had been murdered.

She told the interviewer that the kidnappers were not terrorists and simply are your average Joes, or Mohammeds, who “see no other way to change reality.”

Wouldn’t she be great on a Reality Show?

Some of her other exploitation of free speech have been to back a “siege on the State of Israel instead of negotiating with it.”

By the way, Zoabi lives in Nazareth, in the Galilee and has not professed that she would prefer to live in the Palestinian Authority and try her “free speech” approach to criticize Mahmoud Abbas.

More likely, she is waiting for the Palestinian Authority to take over all of Israel.

And what does Madame Zoabi have to say about today’s judicial lesson that free speech does not cover direct incitement?

She was very surprised at the justices’ line of questioning and is optimistic they will rule in her favor and against the Knesset Ethics Committee.

If the court were to rule against her, she said, “racists and bigots will wipe out any chance of peace co-existence.”

Speaking to the press, Zoabi said she was surprised by the political nature of the discussion, but hoped that the court finds in her favor. “Otherwise, the racists and bigots will eradicate any chance of peaceful coexistence in this country,” she said.

She was not holding a mirror in front of her face when she made the statement.

Israeli lawmakers across the spectrum voted 68-16 Wednesday to uphold a six-month ban imposed in July against Balad MK Hanin Zoabi on all legislative activity except voting.

Zoabi tried to appeal the ban on Wednesday, three months after being suspended by the Knesset Ethics Committee for incitement.

Numerous lawmakers – including Speaker Yuli Edelstein – filed complaints with the Committee about Zoabi’s support for Hamas rocket attacks against the State of Israel during Operation Protective Edge, and her statement that the Hamas abduction and murder of three Israeli yeshiva teens was not terrorism.

Zoabi has since traveled to Qatar – an enemy state which supports Hamas and its founding entity, the Muslim Brotherhood – and met with Balad party founder, former MK Azmi Bishara.

Bishara fled Israel as he was being investigated possible acts of espionage on behalf of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror organization during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

In 2010, Zoabi also participated in the illegal flotilla attempt to breach Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza, by joining terror activists from Turkey aboard the IHH-sponsored Mavi Marmara vessel. The flotilla was stopped by the IDF in international waters.

The following year she was banned from the Knesset for two months after physically attacking an usher for trying to remove her from the hall when she refused to go when ordered to do so.

The Israeli Arab lawmaker, who has consistently maintained a position as a representative of the Palestinian Authority Arab population – rather than that of an Arab Israeli – insisted in her appeal that she had the right to free speech.

“I speak to you as someone proud of being a daughter of this land,” Zoabi began. “There was not, and there will not be a person who can turn me, or my nation, into guests or strangers here.”

Zoabi said she knew it is hard for some Mks to hear her express her views or even to see her walk through the halls of the Knesset. But, she said, it is equally hard for her to see Arabs treated as the enemy.

The real issue, she said, is the difference in perspective: “You are annoyed that I use the words ‘occupation and war crimes” but it is the actual occupation and war crimes that trouble me the most.”

She was interrupted by an agitated Labor MK, Itzik Shmueli, who shouted that she crossed the line in speaking in such a way about Israeli soldiers, freedom of speech notwithstanding.

Shmueli, who refused to quiet down, was removed from the Knesset hall by Speaker Yuli Edelstein.

Further pushing the point, Zoabi added, “Yes, I crossed the lines of consensus – a warlike, aggressive, racist, populist, chauvinist, arrogant consensus.

“I must cross those lines. I am no Zionist, and that is within my legal right.

“I am a Palestinian, born in this land. Any person who supports the decision of the committee [against me] is against justice, equality and freedom of speech, and supports political persecution.

“Whoever stands silent joins the racists who do not want representation for the Arabs!”

Hanin Zoabi, Israel’s de facto Minister for Anti-Zionism and chair of the Fifth Column, outdid herself on Sunday be comparing the IDF with the Islamic State (ISIS).

Actually, that is not true. She did not compare them. The IDF is much worse, she stated on Channel 2 television, because the Islamic State “kills one person at a time with each knife while an IDF pilot kills dozens of Palestinians by pressing a button.”

Not to be totally outdone by Zoabi’s love for hate, another one of her Balad party colleagues, MK Basel Ghattas, chimed in on Army Radio Monday to say that there is a big difference between the Israeli army and the Islamic State, which “unlike the IDF, has not committed crimes against humanity.

Zoabi, a resident of Nazareth in the Galilee, is the same cheerleader for terror who was on the IHH terrorists’ Mavi Mamara ship aimed at breaking the maritime embargo on Hamas.

She previously has used the Knesset podium to call Israel a Nazi state, reject Israel as a Jewish state, a basic part of the Balad party’s platform, and to dismiss the Iranian nuclear threat simply as one of “potential.” She also has sung the Palestinian anthem at a Hamas rally.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, on cue, called the Balad party a “terrorist organization” that exploits the Knesset to “advance terrorism while taking advantage of parliamentary immunity.”

Previous moves to indict her for incitement were ditched by Israel’s cowards in the office of the Attorney General.

Transportation Minister Israel Katz of the Likud party called Zoabi’s statement “treason and sedition.”

As usual, everyone is trying to matching Zoabi’s mouth with shocking words , but no one ever does anything about Zoabi, who would long have been thrown into jail in any other democratic country that understands the principle that freedom of speech does not include yelling ”fire” in a crowded theatre just to get attention.

The Jewish Press has come up with a practical idea and is asking you to put some money in the pushkie to raise enough shekels to buy her a first-class airline ticket for her to fly to Syria.

Once there, Zoabi can see herself the difference between the ISIS and the IDF, and when she comes back to Israel, maybe she will have some more sense in her head, unless it comes back on a separate ticket.

Following the escalating and extreme violence by Muslims on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the police have restricted Muslims access to the site, in order to reduce the likelihood they will attack Jews, police and visitors on the Jewish people’s holiest site.

On Wednesday morning, 250 Arabs protested at the Lion’s Gate against the police restrictions, though not against the ongoing Arab violence and terror that caused the police to restrict their access in the first place.

The protesters on their parts said it was not fair that Muslims were restricted from praying on the Temple Mount while Jews were allowed to pray at the Kotel.

There are no known incidents of Jews throwing Molotov cocktails and cinder blocks at visitors to the Kotel.

Among the protesters were Arab MKs Jamal Zahalka, Basel Gatz and Hanin Zoabi. Ynet reports that the protesters clashed with police as they tried to get a group of Arab women onto the mount.

The Yisrael Beytenu Knesset faction introduced a law on Wednesday to strip Knesset members of their parliamentary seat, and their citizenship, if they are found to have backed and endorsed terrorism.

The move is aimed at Israeli Arab Balad MK Hanin Zoabi, who has expressed pro-Hamas views from the podium of the Knesset and in 2010 joined a foreign anti-Israel flotilla aimed at breaking the counter terrorism blockade of Gaza. Zoabi is being investigated in connection with her incessant anti-Israel incitement and possibly treasonous actions, particularly in wartime.

In the past, her predecessor in the same political party, Israeli Arab MK Azmi Bishara, was under investigation for similar activities and was about to be charged with treason when he fled the country.

Will the State of Israel at last investigate the actions of MK Hanin Zoabi? The decision is up to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan.

But if they give a green light, police have recommended the government take a look into whether MK Hanin Zoabi has crossed the line into criminal incitement with her constant barbs against the State of Israel.

The straw that may have broken the camel’s back, finally, was an interview Zoabi gave – and a follow-up – in the wake of the terrorist kidnapping of three yeshiva boys who were hitchhiking home from Gush Etzion on June 12. Zoabi declared on TLV1 Radio that the kidnappers – discovered by Israeli intelligence to irrefutably to have been members of the Hamas terrorist organization – were “not terrorists.”

Instead, Zoabi declared, “They are not terrorists. I do not agree with you. They see no other way to change their reality and have to restort to these measures until Israel sobers up and feels the suffering of the others.”

In fact, she later added that perhaps it was Israel’s Defense Forces who were the terrorists, and maybe the boys weren’t kidnapped at all. She then accused the Palestinian Authority security forces of “treason” for cooperating with Israel to search for the kidnapped boys.

Knesset members from one end of the political spectrum to the other condemned her remarks with many calling for her dismissal – but Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein pointed out that he has no recourse to do so under Israeli law.

Zoabi has often made remarks — and acted — in ways that are more in line with representing the interests of the Palestinian Authority than those of the State of Israel, in whose parliament she participates.

In 2010 she supported and even participated in an illegal flotilla intended to violate Israel’s legal boundaries and break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza. That blockade is a defense against terrorist imports of weapons and ammunition that are used in attacks on civilians and IDF soldiers.

She has also been photographed in past years at unauthorized meetings with Hamas officials from Gaza.

The participation of an Israeli parliamentarian whose loyalty is questionable is deeply troubling because as a member of the government, she automatically has access to highly sensitive security information.

Several years ago, her predecessor in the Balad party, former MK Azmi Bishara, fled the country just prior to being charged with treason. Bishara was suspected of receiving large sums of money in exchange for handing over information on sensitive military sites and other security information to the enemy during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. He has since traveled from one enemy Arab nation to the next, broadcasting poisonous lectures against the State of Israel and recruiting terrorists for attacks against the country. For a long time he also managed to also draw a Knesset member’s pension for his time served as a legislator, since he succeeded in fleeing abroad before ever being charged with a crime.