MK Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Camp) probably regrets telling Army Radio on Thursday that the Arab who stabbed a soldier at a Hebron check point on Purim and was then shot dead while lying on the ground was not a terrorist. It sounds as if Bahloul was trying to say that the term Terrorist (Mekhabel in Hebrew) is being over used to the point where it has become so unspecific, “it turns every Palestinian into one [such terrorist].”
He tried to explain: “I agree that anyone who kills an entire family is a terrorist,” he said. “They are terrorists and murderers who deserve all the punishments. Anyone who murdered someone, who severed the life of an innocent or ambushed a family returning home from work is a terrorist.” But when it comes to attacking a military facility, it’s a different rule, he continued. “They can’t be considered terrorists if they attack a military camp,” he said.
Which is why attacking a soldier at a check point, stabbing him in the neck, is not an act of terrorism according to MK Bahloul, a member of a Zionist party in the Knesset which is so Zionist, it changed its name to Zionist Camp.
As is common with trying to fix a blunder, the explanation made it sound even worse. Essentially, Bahloul believes that to kill a soldier is a legitimate act of war. Which must mean that he believes that the IDF is a colonialist army and that attacking any of its members and facilities is an expression of freedom fighting.
They were looking to expel Haneen Zoabi from the Knesset for saying a lot less than that.
His pals in the party threw him hastily under the nearest bus. The party’s official statement was that “the terrorist in Hebron is like any other terrorist. The statement of MK Bahloul does not reflect the position of the Zionist Camp.”
Zionist Camp Chairman and Opposition Leader MK Itzhak Herzog said, “I utterly condemn the statement by MK Bahloul. A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. I made it clear to him that I reject and utterly condemn his statements and that the position of the Zionist Camp is that a terrorist is a terrorist, makes no difference if he set out to murder Arabs or Jews.”
MK Itzik Shmuli (Zionist Camp) said that “this is an extremist statement which is not acceptable to most Israelis. The path to disengaging from the Palestinians does not go through distortions of reality and falsifying what’s going on. A terrorist is a terrorist, which is how he should be treated (the terrorist, that is). I have a lot of respect for Zouheir, but I believe that in this case he is wrong on the substance as well as on the form and he must take it back.”
MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin (Zioist Camp) stressed that “each death is tragic and anyone who murders or attempts to murder deserves every condemnation and the most severe punishment — terror is terror is terror. In order to be able to live here in a true coexistence we must recognize each other’s pain and not compare one death to another. My friend MK Bahloul committed a terrible error when he refused to acknowledge that an attempted murder against a Jew is a serious thing, like every act of terror.”
The rightwing folks had a field day, as was to be expected. Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi) advised MK Herzog to “remove himself quickly from statements of this kind, lest he be left with a camp, but no Zionism.”
MK Oren Hazan (Likud), himself quite the maven on getting the media’s attention, suggested that “it’s a method whereby any Arab MK who isn’t getting attention simply starts praising the shahids (martyrs) and we all follow the tune of their flute. I for one am not ready to listen to this ugly tune. It’s become clear very quickly that Zouheir Bahloul’s places is with the rest of his [Arab MK] friends, not in the Knesset, and I won’t be surprised if the next phase for him would be actively supporting terrorism, which would force us to throw him behind bars.”