Hadash-Ta’al chairman Ayman Odeh calls on fellow opposition factions to join together to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “as soon as possible.”
Addressing reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Odeh says that the government has three aims during the current parliamentary session, “harming the West Bank…promoting the judicial coup…and preventing the Arab population from running in the next elections.”
Yet such promises count for little at a time when Israel’s current government continues to bomb, shell, and starve Palestinians in Gaza, all while taking rapid steps toward formally annexing the West Bank. Nor has the opposition — neither its parliamentary representatives, like the Democrats, or the protest movement in the streets — shown the ability to turn growing discontent over the government’s handling of the war and abandonment of the hostages into a full-throated defense of Palestinians’ humanity.
Until they do, it is hard to imagine just how different the next government, whoever comprises it, will be when it comes to the prospect of peace and equality for all the people in this land.
Hadash and three Arab parties Ra’am, Ta’al, and Balad are negotiating to reestablish the Joint List bloc ahead for the next elections. “The atmosphere during the meeting on Sunday was really good,” MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash-Ta’al) told The Jerusalem Post. During the meeting, Hadash-Ta’al presented a “road map toward the Joint List” who included a detailed three-phase process for the reestablishing the list.
Upon MK Odeh’s arrival, dozens of rioters attacked his car and shouted racist slogans such as “Death to Arabs.” When MK Odeh spoke at the protest, he was attacked again, together with the other demonstrators, as various objects were thrown at them. Following his speech, MK Odeh managed to reach his car, while rioters armed with stones and sticks tried to attack him. At one point, the rioters hurled a large stone that shattered the vehicle’s rear windshield. After these events, the police arrested only three people: one of whom was a demonstrator who had been attacked by the rioters; he was released shortly thereafter at the police station. The court later released the two other individuals who were arrested and detained.
Following these events, right-wing activists uploaded dozens of posts and videos on social media platforms praising, sympathizing and encouraging these assaults; some even explicitly called for repeating such acts in the future.
Hundreds of people protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday afternoon, calling for an end to the war and to prevent the growing hunger in the Gaza Strip
Hadash said on Friday, August 22, that several thousands of Jews and Arabs from across the country are expected to participate tomorrow in the protest against war and starvation planned to set out from Dizengoff Square at 4:30 p.m., where it will then proceed to Habima Square. Hadash also called for the broadest participation of the Arab public to take part in the upcoming protest in Tel Aviv.
The protest was named “Stop the Starvation, Stop the War – Yes to Life and Peace”, is expected to be an Arab-Jewish demonstration led by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel, an umbrella organization of the Arab community and sponsored by Partnership for Peace and dozens of human rights and anti-occupation movements.
Streamed live on Jul 25, 2025 (…)
Join DRM News for live coverage of the protest in Sakhnin, Israel, where hundreds of Arab citizens demand the Israeli government end the hunger crisis in Gaza. The demonstration calls for unrestricted humanitarian aid and a ceasefire amid escalating starvation reports.
(July 25, 2025)
Over 10,000 people protested on Friday in the northern Arab Israeli city of Sakhnin against the war in Gaza and the starvation of its Palestinian population.
(16 hours ago)
“We strongly condemn the effort to expel MK Ayman Odeh from the Israeli Knesset,” the US senators said. “If Israel is going to call itself a democracy, it must tolerate peaceful dissent.” The senators linked the expulsion effort to Odeh’s calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and a political solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
“For over a decade, MK Odeh has been a leading advocate for peace, justice, and Jewish-Arab partnership,” they said. “The current expulsion effort is a direct response to MK Odeh’s outspoken and brave calls.” The lawmakers described the move as sending “a chilling message to millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel: that their representation is conditional and their rights revocable.” “We stand in solidarity with MK Odeh and with the right of all lawmakers, Arab and Jewish, to speak freely and without fear of political retribution,” they said.
On Monday, the Knesset House Committee voted to impeach Palestinian parliamentarian Ayman Odeh, head of the predominantly Arab Hadash-Ta’al list. His crime? In January, as the two-month Gaza ceasefire came into effect, Odeh tweeted: “I am happy about the release of the [Israeli] hostages and [Palestinian] prisoners. From here, both peoples must be freed from the yoke of the occupation. We were all born free.”
As I watched the committee’s hearing, I felt like my eyes were bleeding. It was physically unbearable. Knesset members from across the political spectrum — who aren’t worthy of the dust on Odeh’s shoes when it comes to humanism, morality, and democratic integrity — competed to see who could spew the vilest rhetoric against him.
No one paid attention to the Knesset’s legal adviser — who, after the obligatory lip service condemning Odeh’s “disgusting statements,” concluded that there was no legal basis for his impeachment. And it goes without saying that no one listened to Odeh’s attorney, Dr. Hassan Jabareen, who explained why the proposal was procedurally flawed, legally unsound, and morally bankrupt.
From the first sentence to the last, the hearing was a farce.
The impeachment was not just a response to specific statements but directed against “Odeh as a person and everything he represents,” Boaron said in his closing argument. At the end of the hearing, committee chairman Ofir Katz (Likud) said Odeh was a “bitter enemy” of Israel, and in a “normal country,” he would “rot in jail.”
Only Ra’am MK Waleed Taha and Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi voted against his impeachment.
The motion will now move to the Knesset’s plenary session for a majority vote of 90 members out of 120 to complete Odeh’s impeachment.
Even if his impeachment is approved, the Arab MK will still be able to file a petition against the decision with the Supreme Court.
Palestinians of 1948 (Arabs inside Israel) constitute 21% of Israel’s nearly 10 million population.
While a similar effort to oust Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofer Cassif failed in the Knesset plenum in February 2024 due to insufficient support from the opposition, opposition representatives on the committee were very much in favor of the motion this time around, with both Yesh Atid MK Simon Davidson and National Unity lawmaker Pnina Tamano-Shata voting in favor of impeachment.
EDM (Early Day Motion) 695: tabled on 24 January 2025
Tabled in the 2024-25 session.
This motion has been signed by 10 Members. It has not yet had any amendments submitted.
Motion text
That this House expresses deep concern regarding the efforts of Israeli coalition and opposition politicians to oust MK Ayman Odeh from the Knesset; joins Odeh in welcoming the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal which enabled the exchange of Israeli and Palestinian hostages and abductees; supports the sentiment of Palestinians and Israelis being freed from the burden of occupation and building a shared future; notes that, of the 90 Palestinians hostages most recently released by Israel, 69 were women, 21 were children, and most had been held without charge or trial; acknowledges the existence of myriad political mechanisms that enable the targeting, exclusion, and marginalisation of Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset, including the conflation of one’s support for Palestinian rights with support for terrorism or incitement to violence; further notes the similar employment of the impeachment process against MK Ofer Cassif, as a result of his signing a petition in support of the South Africa’s case forwarded in the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza; believes in the value of maintaining a representative democracy that encompasses a broad array of political, social, and ethnic creeds; and calls on the Government to vehemently oppose any efforts by Israeli parliamentarians to further solidify an ethnocratic, apartheid state, and deny the Palestinian population’s right to self-determination through the rooting out of democratically elected officials that represent their cause.
(June 27, 2025)
In a display of open hostility, Committee Chair Ofir Katz declared to MK Odeh: “You won’t be in the Knesset—we will remain, and you won’t. Not in the Knesset, not in Israel.” Other MKs shouted that he should “keep shouting from jail,” while another told him: “You all should go to Gaza”. Right-wing MKs accused him of promoting a “violent Palestinian ideology,” said an indictment should already have been filed, and called him an “enemy from within.”
Chair Katz escalated the incitement further, stating: “While the soldiers are fighting on seven fronts, the eighth front needs to be cleared, and Ayman Odeh is our eighth front… He is continuously working to weaken the State of Israel, to discredit it, to undermine it and to strengthen its enemies.” When MK Odeh repeated that the Israeli military is committing war crimes—a statement for which he was already sanctioned by the Knesset Ethics Committee—the chair threatened: “If you continue to defame IDF soldiers, you will not be allowed to speak here.”
The committee blatantly ignored the Knesset legal advisor’s determination that only one statement—MK Odeh’s January tweet concerning the Israel-Hamas deal—could be legally considered. Instead, MKs used the hearing to dredge up unrelated political positions and to launch personal attacks, in open defiance of the law and the legal advisor’s position.
MK Odeh’s January statement was a tweet that read: “Happy about the release of the hostages and prisoners. From here, we must free both peoples from the burden of occupation. We were all born free.” During the hearing, he reaffirmed his support for this statement and others, including his position that Israel is committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.
On last Tuesday, June 24, during wars in Gaza and Iran, the Knesset House Committee began the process of expelling MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash). Why? He protected free speech and called for the end of war and occupation. But in a so called “Israel democracy” a political speech by a Hadash MK is grounds for dismissal. Dr Hassan Jabareen of Adalah—The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, who is serving as Odeh’s legal counsel and is arguing as such.
Att. Jabareen, condemned the process as fundamentally flawed and unlawful, noting that the MKs’ refusal to follow the legal advisor’s ruling violated Odeh’s rights and rendered the entire procedure illegitimate. He emphasized that Odeh’s speech is fully legal and protected. The proceedings confirmed what has been clear from the outset of this process: the expulsion attempt is a dangerous, inciteful escalation in the ongoing political assault against Hadash and Arab Palestinian lawmakers in Israel.
As former Executive Director of Breaking the Silence Avner Gvaryahu wrote, Ayman “proves that it is possible to be a proud Palestinian Arab and still work for a better Israeli society for everyone.”
He continued:
Jewish-Arab partnership is not just a matter of social justice or a historical correction. It is the basis of any genuine vision of change in the Middle East. As long as we continue to live in the reality of separation, suspicion and dominance of one group over another, we will continue to walk in the same circles of violence and oppression. Partnership offers another way—a way through, in which the national conflict does not have to define every relationship between Jews and Arabs.
Therefore repelling Ayman from the public sphere is not only an expulsion of an Arab citizen [from the Knesset], but also a continued expulsion of the ideas of the left. This is a clear message [from the government] that the politics of partnership is undesirable, that the public space is only for those willing to remain silent about the occupation and settle for crumbs. It’s part of a broader process of narrowing democratic space and revoking the legitimacy of critical votes.
(June 3, 2025)
Amid talks about a possible early election triggered by the controversy over the exemption law from military service, interest is growing among Arab parties inside and outside the Knesset. In recent weeks, quiet negotiations have been underway to unite all the Arab parties: Ra’am, Hadash, Ta’al and Balad. The goal is to replicate the dramatic success of the Joint List in the March 2020 Knesset elections, when it won 15 seats.
Yet Israel’s political chaos between 2019 and 2022, marked by five consecutive elections and an electorate divided almost evenly between pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, gave the Joint List an unexpected second life. Reconstituted ahead of the September 2019 vote, it immediately regained its 13 seats. Then, in March 2020, it achieved a historic milestone, becoming Israel’s third-largest party with 15 seats — the highest ever for Palestinian representation. Turnout rebounded, while support for Zionist parties among Palestinian voters collapsed from 28 percent to just 12 percent.
“This is exactly how fascism works. It pursues the opposition, and the opposition, frightened, rushes to sacrifice us all.” Odeh likened the panicked mother to the anti-Netanyahu opposition, which he claimed gave up on peace with the Palestinians, and soon after, on partnership with Arab-Palestinian leadership in Israel.
“I want to put before you a crucial proposition — the historic role of Arab citizens. Without us, it is possible to build a dictatorship, but without us, it is impossible to build a democracy,” he said. “Even during this excruciating and bloody war, Jews and Arabs — you all — continued to have faith in each other and believed that only together we can win,” he continued, invoking the well-known wartime slogan. “Without us, you can build a dictatorship, but you can’t build a democracy. Without us, you can keep fighting wars but can’t make peace. Our fates are intertwined, and only together, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, can build the lives and future our children deserve.”
Academia for Equality is a members‘ organization working to promote democratization, equality, inclusion, representation, and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel/Palestine. We believe that furthering our mission in academia will promote justice and equality in our society and region as a whole. Recognizing the rights of both peoples in Israel-Palestine according to international law, we struggle against the complicity of Israeli academia with the occupation, war, and apartheid, strive for academic freedom, and stand against the silencing of critical voices in Israel and the wider academic world. We criticize the neoliberalization and fascization of academic life and the degradation of academia as a public institution. We combat all forms of discrimination and exploitation in academia; abusive labor relations, sexual harassment, abuse of power and marginalization of minority groups. Our collective activities, bringing together faculty and students of all ranks, identities and groups across institutions in Israel-Palestine and internationally, seek to lay the foundations for solidarity across class and institutional differences in a range of intersecting struggles aimed at changing the face of academia and society.
Academia for Equality published a call to Israeli scholars to reject US President Donald Trump’s attacks on students and academic freedom under the false pretense of “combatting antisemitism.” Academia for Equality is an organization with 800 Jewish and Arab academics in Israel members organization working to promote democratization, equality, inclusion, representation, and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel and Palestine.
The call said: “We, Israeli professors, educators, researchers, graduate students, and members of academia, hailing from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, possessing diverse political views, living in and outside Israel, are deeply concerned about the recent actions undertaken by the US Administration against Columbia University and other US universities. We are alarmed by the persecution of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students and faculty, including the illegal arrests and threats to deport activists without any specific charges or due process, at times in clear violation of court orders, especially under the pretext of combating antisemitism.
A meeting with Reem Hazan and Sapir Sluzker-Amran, two prominent activists in the anti-war movement in Israel, who are fighting against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and advocating for an end to the occupation will be held in Germany next Thursday, January 9, 2025, 18:00 at Heiners Bar, Weserstraße 58, Berlin-Neukölln 12045.
In a conversation hosted by the Berlin-based group Israelis für Frieden (Israelis for Peace), Hazan and Sluzker-Amran will discuss the link between Israel’s current war crimes and the deep-rooted heritage of discrimination and oppression within Israeli society—targeting the Arab-Palestinian minority as well as Mizrahi Jews and other marginalized communities, and their analysis and experiences from the past 15 months of struggles against intense state violence and oppression within a public opinion that supports the war. In addition, they will share their perspectives on the situation and potential paths toward a future of equality and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
(December 17, 2024)
In the petition, Adalah Attorney Salam Irsheid argued that the law is clearly racist in intent, especially given the widespread persecution and criminalization of hundreds of Palestinian citizens by Israeli authorities and other entities since the outbreak of the war 7 October 2023, for merely expressing entirely lawful opinions. The law’s deliberate vagueness, and the fact that it only addresses “incitement to terrorism”—which is used almost exclusively to target Palestinians—while excluding incitement to violence or racism, highlights its discriminatory purpose. By granting broad, unchecked powers to political and administrative authorities, the law enables punitive actions to be taken against Palestinian educators for expressing views that fall outside the mainstream consensus, thereby severely undermining their basic right to freedom of expression. Adalah further argued that the law breaches the principle of the separation of powers, as it grants the Education Ministry the authority to infringe on teachers’ rights to freedom of expression and occupation, effectively requiring a determination of whether they have committed a criminal offense, even if no charges have been filed against them.
Hadash MKs opposed the proposed legislation, calling it “dime-store fascist populism and McCarthyism.” According to Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman, “The Knesset is advancing two bills targeting critical students and professors, aimed primarily at Palestinian and leftist voices in academia. These bills seek to silence any remaining voices resisting the government’s policies of occupation and war. This marks another step in the fascist agenda to suppress any real opposition to the extreme right. Heads of universities, professors, and students recognize the danger of such legislation and are voicing their opposition.
On past week, the Knesset plenum, in a preliminary reading, passed a proposed law that would amend the Students Rights Law, allowing most Israeli higher education institutions to implement gender separation. MK Son Har-Melech proposed the law, which 55 members of the Knesset (MKs) supported and 45 MKs opposed.
(November 29, 2024)
I am not alone in opposing his tyranny. The consistent political opposition inside Israel itself, made up of democratic Jews and Arab citizens, finds the notion of democracy in Israel under Netanyahu absurd too. Democracy in Israel never really existed, owing to the state of Israel’s definition as an ethnic concept, antithetical to political egalitarianism.
A state that under its basic laws declares one group politically superior to the other cannot be regarded as a democracy, but as an ethnocracy. Since its formation, Israel has been pursuing discriminatory policies towards its own Palestinian citizens in all spheres of life – housing, employment, welfare and education. Even the supposed Israeli bill of rights, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, doesn’t dare to mention the right to equality.
Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.
The lawyer and city counselor from central Israel says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. It’s unclear when he’ll get a final verdict on his guilt or innocence. Until then, he’s forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.
The Knesset held a series of discussions about the proposed law. Professionals representing government ministries and the Knesset‘s legal counsel stated clearly that this is unconstitutional legislation that cannot be implemented, and if it reaches judicial review it will be revoked. Knesset members from right-wing parties nonetheless decided to advance it, though they are well aware that it is a populist bill not worth the paper it is written on, in order to set the stage for a confrontation between the Knesset, professional groups, and the Supreme Court.
What are the problems with the law? This is not a law at all: it is a populist pamphlet, which, like many other things this terrible Knesset is doing, is intended to mark Arab citizens and residents as disloyal, whose presence is contingent on containment.
The bill was attacked during the debate in the plenum by Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi, who retweeted a statement by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) arguing that its purpose was “to regulate the discourse in schools and to harm teachers whose statements and worldview do not coincide with those of the education minister and the political parties controlling the Education Ministry.”
“The purpose of the law is to threaten teachers and principals of Arab schools, to mark them and make them a target for surveillance and persecution,” the rights group stated, arguing that the tools already at its disposal before the current law were “adequate and sufficient.” “The law severely violates the rights to expression, employment and pedagogical autonomy of teachers and administrators,” it added. The teachers’ unions also opposed the bill.
Rashad was killed for his talent and inspiration – for daring to be a voice of hope in a world that so desperately needs it. Israel is not just targeting individuals; it is trying to break us as a people, to erase Palestinian culture, identity and existence.
These efforts at erasure have been ongoing for 76 years, since the Nakba. They have targeted our leaders, intellectuals and artists. Indeed, Rashad’s story is not unique: Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians like him, people who dared to dream of a better world, and to use their talents to inspire others.
I don’t know what to say or do in the face of such grief. Rashad shone so brightly. I will not let his memory fade.
MK Cassif said to journalists, “In spite of the fascist menace and terrorization, we marched today, thousands of Jews and Arabs together, to protest against the criminal massacre in Gaza, the occupation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, against social injustice, class exploitation and fascism, and for the release of the hostages on the basis of ‘all-for-all’ principle, for social and national equality, democracy, and just peace.”
(05.03.2024)
Three Hadash-Ta’al lawmakers met Monday, March 4, with Jordan’s King Abdullah amid concerns that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan could amplify tensions in occupied East Jerusalem stemming from the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip. MK Ayman Odeh, the head of the parliamentary Hadash-Ta’al alliance, MKs Ahmad Tibi and Youssef Atawneh traveled to Amman and asked the Jordanian monarch to pressure Israel to ensure freedom of worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.