Israel: Far-right Lawmaker Calls To Ban Arab Political Parties

Far-right Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich on Monday called to ban Arab political parties in the country. 

Speaking at Reichmann University's World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, the head of the Religious Zionism party said that Israel's Arab parties are "the most dangerous security threat to Israel today."

"They are the first to lead the hostile discourse against Israel and against its right to exist," he said, adding that widespread massacre by Arab citizens was “a more realistic scenario than ever.” Smotrich painted a picture of “hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons being directed at the moment of truth against Israeli citizens.”

“The concealment efforts led by (head of Islamist Ra'am party) Mansour Abbas in the old and well-known method of the Islamic movement camouflage radical, extremist Islamist nationalism, which seeks to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with one big Islamic caliphate,” he claimed.

His statements spawned backlash from members of the Arab-majority Joint List party, with lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman calling Smotrich a “racist Jewish supremacist.”