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Israeli parliament passes law allowing deportation of relatives of ‘terrorists’
Lawmakers in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, gave final approval to legislation allowing the government to deport family members of so-called “terrorists” to war-torn Gaza and elsewhere, even if they are Israeli citizens.
Sixty-one lawmakers voted in favour of the controversial legislation, while 41 opposed it, as the bill cleared the two final Knesset plenum readings required to become law.
Sponsored by Hanoch Milwidsky, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, the legislation gives the interior minister power to deport a first-degree relative of someone who has carried out an attack if they are believed to have known about it and failed to report it, or “expressed support … for an act of terrorism or a terrorist organisation”.
The bill stipulates that the suspect will have the right to present a defence at a meeting convened by the interior minister. If deemed guilty, the minister will have 14 days to sign a deportation order. Even if deported, the accused will retain their Israeli citizenship.
The law would reportedly apply to Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of occupied East Jerusalem, but it’s yet unclear if it would apply in the occupied West Bank. The deportees could be banned from Israel for a period ranging from 7 to 20 years.
Eran Shamir-Borer, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former international law expert for the Israeli military, said that if the law reaches the Supreme Court, it is likely to be struck down based on previous Israeli cases regarding deportation.
“The bottom line is this is completely non-constitutional and a clear conflict to Israel’s core values,” said Shamir-Borer.
Knesset passes law that allows firing of teachers that show ‘sympathy for terrorist act’
The Israeli parliament has given its final approval to a law granting the Education Ministry the authority to fire, without notice, teachers who it judges to have identified with a “terrorist act”.
The bill allows for the firing of teachers who “published a direct call to carry out an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism [or] support for or identification with it”.
It also authorised the ministry to cut funding for schools that show support for attacks against Israeli citizens and targets.
The bill specifically mentions Arab schools in occupied East Jerusalem, which it alleges “incite minors against the state of Israel”.
New Knesset laws pave way for ‘teachers to be targets for persecution'
One law allows for the deportation of citizens of Israel of Palestinian descent who happen to be family members of people who have attacked Israel or had planned to attack Israel. They would be deported if they were deemed to have had prior knowledge or if they had expressed sympathy with the act or with so-called terrorist organisations.
All Palestinian factions are labelled as terrorist organisations by Israel.
Any expression of sympathy with the victims of the war in Gaza has been labelled as an expression of support for terror, especially in the past year.
The other law targets Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed illegally, as well as schools inside Israel proper, run by Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Any expression of Palestinian identity, or support for Palestinian aspirations, any use of national symbols would be deemed in a very sweeping, very elastic notion of terrorism, those teachers would be sacked without prior notice.
The Ministry of Education could also defund the schools. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has sounded the alarm, saying that this bill against teachers in particular opens the way for Palestinian teachers to be targets for persecution.
