Likud Knesset member calls to revoke citizenship of former MK Hanin Zoabi

Likud Knesset Member Ariel Kallner is urging action to revoke former Palestinian-Israeli MK Hanin Zoabi’s citizenship for expressing support for the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“There is no place in the State of Israel for supporting atrocities the likes of which have not occurred since the Holocaust,” Kallner wrote in a letter to Israeli Minister of Interior Moshe Arbel on Tuesday. “Anyone who crosses this red line does not deserve Israeli citizenship.”

Zoabi, a former member of the Arab Israeli Balad Party, said during the Palestine Congress Vienna, held Oct. 5-6, 2024, that “It’s not Hamas who is resisting. It is the Palestinian people.”

“You cannot differentiate between Hamas and the Palestinian people. You cannot differentiate between them. Those who entered on the seventh of October—they didn’t enter Israeli borders. They entered their own land. This is their land,” she said to applause.

A video of her comments was made public on Monday by Israel’s Channel 14 investigative journalist Ishay Fridman.

Balad, a left-wing Palestinian nationalist political party in Israel, failed to cross the electoral threshold in the 2022 Knesset elections, receiving only 2.9% of the vote. The electoral threshold in Israel is 3.25%.

Due to its extremist positions, Balad had twice been disqualified from running for Knesset seats by Israel’s Central Elections Committee, most recently in 2022. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned both bans.