MK Hanin Zoabi petitioned the High Court of Justice today against the Ethics Committee's decision to exclude her from Knesset plenary debates for six months.<\/p>\r\n
As you may recall, following Zoabi's controversial statements, including that the kidnappers and murderers of the three boys were not terrorists, a complaint was filed against her with the Knesset Ethics Committee, which decided to ban Zoabi from plenary debates for six months.<\/p>\r\n
Now Zoabi is petitioning the Ethics Committee, the Knesset Speaker, and the Knesset, requesting that the decision be overturned.<\/p>\r\n
In the petition, Zoabi claims that the statements are clearly political, as someone who is in an opposition minority. "This decision was made without authority," the petition states, "infringing on the petitioner's substantive immunity and her freedom of political expression - which is a fundamental right of particular importance to an elected official.".<\/p>\r\n
\""Accepting the position of the Ethics Committee, according to which the committee has the authority to impose sanctions on Knesset members also due to the content of statements covered by a Knesset member's protected freedom of political expression, constitutes a dangerous precedent. This opens the door to political persecution of the minority by the majority, harms the purposes for which substantive immunity was granted, and even harms the purpose of the ethics rules in the Knesset regulations.".<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MK Hanin Zoabi petitioned the High Court of Justice today against the Ethics Committee's decision to ban her from plenary debates for six months, following her statement that the kidnappers and murderers of the three boys were not terrorists: "A violation of substantive immunity and freedom of political expression"\"","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n