A firebrand Israeli parliamentarian provoked a political and social media storm earlier this week when he signed a petition supporting South Africa’s case of genocide in opposition to Israel, which is to be heard on the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Ofer Cassif, who declared his backing for South Africa on social media, will help the nation’s authorized bid when it comes earlier than the ICJ on Thursday and Friday this week.
“My constitutional obligation is to Israeli society and all its residents,” he wrote on X on January 7. “To not a authorities whose members and its coalition are calling for ethnic cleaning and even precise genocide. They’re those who hurt the nation and the folks, they’re those who led to South Africa’s attraction to The Hague, not me and my associates.”
The Palestinian demise toll from Israel’s near-100-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip has crossed 23,000 folks, together with practically 10,000 kids.
Who’s Ofer Cassif?
Cassif is a politician from the left-wing, Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al occasion, Hadash being the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Entrance for Peace and Equality. Born in Rishon LeZion close to Tel Aviv in 1964, he has been a member of the Israeli parliament for practically 5 years.
Cassif has a doctorate in political philosophy from the London Faculty of Economics and he was an instructional on the Hebrew College of Jerusalem earlier than he entered parliament.
His penchant for going in opposition to the grain of Israeli society just isn’t new. Within the late Eighties, the pro-Palestinian Israeli, who can also be a proud communist, hung out in jail for refusing to function a soldier within the occupied territories.
In 2021, he claimed police beat him whereas he participated in a protest in opposition to an unlawful Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
His pre-parliamentarian assaults on the Israeli state – as an example, calling one-time Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum” – led the Central Elections Committee to maintain him off the poll for the 2019 elections.
That call was overturned by the Supreme Court docket, nevertheless, and he was elected that 12 months, with Hadash-Ta’al receiving slightly below 4.5 p.c of the nationwide vote and 6 seats within the Knesset. This compares with greater than 26 p.c of the vote and 35 seats for every of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud occasion and Kahol Lavan, the opposition political alliance led by former Defence Minister Benny Gantz, who can also be a member of Netanyahu’s conflict cupboard.
Yossi Mekelberg, an affiliate fellow with the Center East and North Africa Programme at Chatham Home, known as Cassif “an anomaly in Israeli politics”.
“The overwhelming majority of Israeli members of the Knesset are serving in Zionist events – and this isn’t the case with Cassif,” stated Mekelberg of the anti-Zionist politician.
He angered some by refusing to take a supportive stance in the direction of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Knesset through Zoom in March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion, Cassif declined to attend.
“I don’t take sides in a useless conflict that harms harmless civilians, strengthens folks in energy and enriches the lords of conflict,” stated Cassif in a tweet. “I don’t help nationalists and persecutors of the communists in Ukraine, and no, neither do I help Putin and the Russian communist-hating nationalists. No to conflict – sure to peace.”
What’s his imaginative and prescient for Palestine?
Cassif is a staunch supporter of a two-state answer for Israel and Palestine.
In December 2023, throughout a dialog which was transcribed on the web site of the Communist Occasion of Israel, he stated, “The Palestinians, as a folks, are entitled to have their very own impartial state.
“The compromise is by dividing the land alongside the state of Israel, an impartial, sovereign, Palestinian state, which might exist within the outdated territories that Israel occupied in June ’67. Which means the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the West Financial institution. There isn’t a different approach.”
He’s strongly against Israeli settlements within the Palestinian territories and has protested in opposition to them. In February 2022, he joined protesters within the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, the place households have been being evicted from their houses in order that settlers could possibly be moved in.
How has Cassif’s stance gone down with the Israeli folks?
Not effectively. Cassif is one in all simply 400 Israelis, in a inhabitants of practically 9.5 million, to signal a petition supporting South Africa’s lawsuit in opposition to Israel. As a member of the Knesset, his public act of defiance has gone down like a pink rag to a bull.
Within the wake of the Hamas assault on southern Israel on October 7, which prompted the nation to unleash its marketing campaign of aerial bombardments in opposition to Gaza, Cassif was suspended from the Knesset for 45 days for criticising the conflict.
Fellow Israeli parliamentarian Oded Forer known as Cassif’s choice to face in opposition to the nation of his beginning “treasonous”, including that his “phrases can now not be heard whereas the blood of our troopers and residents screams from the bottom”.
Forer is presently amassing lawmakers’ signatures in a bid to have Cassif thrown out of the Knesset. Beneath Knesset guidelines, Forer must persuade 70 members of parliament to help his bid after which acquire approval from the Knesset Home Committee, earlier than parliament can vote on Cassif’s expulsion.
However Cassif seems to benefit from the tough and tumble of Israel’s unstable political scene. “He’s, in some ways, extra of an activist than a parliamentarian,” stated Mekelberg of Cassif. “And what you see is what you get.”
Cassif misplaced associates within the Hamas assault, which killed some 1,139 folks. Certainly, in an October 19, 2023, interview with New York-based Waging Nonviolence, he known as the Hamas incursion “morally despicable”.
However in the identical interview, 12 days after Israel started its bombardment of Gaza, he advised the non-profit media organisation that his vociferous rejection of Israel’s navy response had led to him being “viciously attacked by Israeli right-wingers, together with demise threats, for my view”.
He added, “They merely can’t tolerate, they usually wouldn’t like to simply accept that I, and everybody else, can present sympathy and empathy for the harmless folks in Gaza. On the similar time that one exhibits sympathy and take care of the folks of Israel. It’s not a contradiction.”
What do pro-Palestinian Israelis consider him?
On social media, international supporters of Palestinian rights have lauded Cassif’s choice to go public together with his stance on the South African ICJ case in opposition to Israel. Nonetheless, on the bottom in Israel itself, opinions about him among the many pro-Palestinian left are a bit of extra nuanced.
“He’s somebody we respect and help for his stance in opposition to the genocide, regardless of there being some political variations with a few of us,” stated Neta Golan, an lively member of Israelis In opposition to Apartheid.
Ofer Neiman, a pro-Palestinian Israeli activist from Jerusalem, stated he believes that Cassif is simply too “delicate” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neiman added, “I [also] disagree with him on … [his] reluctance to think about different choices past the two-state answer. However Palestine and the genocide is the main focus right here. So, in a nutshell, he’s a fellow dissident to me.”
