17.07.2025

Speech controls in Knesset

Israel boasts of being the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, but even members of its own parliament are subject to intolerable harassment and attempts to silence them. Ken Syme urges solidarity with Ofer Cassif

Ofer Cassif - a Hadash member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has been suspended. His offence? Accusing the Israel Defence Forces of committing genocide in Gaza.¹

Hadash, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, is, of course, a leftwing coalition in which the ‘official’ Israeli Communist Party plays the leading role. Comrade Cassif serves on its politburo. Hadash, as might be expected, calls for a so-called two state solution in Israel-Palestine and its activists were involved in creating the joint Jewish-Arab anti-occupation movement Omdim Beyachad (Standing Together). Hadash has been standing under that name in elections since 1977 and today has three MKs. The vast bulk of its support comes from Arab Israelis, not least Arab Israeli Christians, though, significantly comrade Cassif himself is Hebrew by nationality.

His suspension comes just a month after the end of his previous six-month suspension for supporting South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice. Comrade Cassif was accused of “undermining the State of Israel’s ability to counter allegations of genocide”.² In both cases the action taken against comrade Cassif used the ‘Suspension Law’ passed in 2016, allowing the Knesset to expel any member if their actions are deemed to constitute “incitement to racism” or “support for an armed struggle against the state of Israel”. The Suspension Law is generally seen as a legislative attempt to silence anti-Zionist voices, Arab-based organisations and supporters of the Palestinian cause in general.

The Israeli state’s attempt to silence any kind of criticism of the Gaza war again manifested itself in recent attempts to impeach Ayman Odeh,³ another Hadash MK and the leader of the coalition - this time based on a social media post in January this year, in which he “rejoices” over the release of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners. A Likud MK found this so objectionable that he raised a motion against Ayman Odeh. The vote to impeach him took place on July 14, but fell 17 short of the 90 supermajority required.

His situation attracted the attention of US senators Bernie Sanders, Peter Welch and Chris Van Hollen, who issued a statement on July 13 condemning the move and expressing their solidarity with Ayman Odeh.⁴ In reality Bernie Sanders’ engagement with comrade Cassif has not been so positive: in December 2023 he did not respond to the comrade’s appeal for a ceasefire in Gaza.⁵

Comrade Cassif has been a lifelong anti-Zionist and has consistently spoken out against the war in Gaza. Almost needless to say, he, as with other Hadash MKs and activists, are subjected to constant Shin Bet harassment, questioning and spying. In December 2024 he briefly outlined his political career (including work to secure a Knesset majority for the Oslo accords in the 1990s), when providing written evidence⁶ (mainly on Israeli settler violence) to the foreign affairs committee in the House of Commons. In his letter he says:

Since the outbreak of the war, my colleague and I have demanded an immediate end of the bloodshed, the release of all hostages and unlawful detainees, and called time after time for the protection of innocent lives and civilian infrastructure. We have supported every international measure to prevent the ongoing humanitarian calamity, famine and carnage.⁷

In the brief interval between his suspensions from the Knesset, Cassif recorded a conversation with Yanis Varoufakis, in which he stated his belief that the war in Gaza was not primarily driven by the October 7 attack by Hamas, but it had been used as a pretext for the implementation of a plan developed by the current Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, when he was a backbench MK in 2017. This ‘subjugation plan’ can be found in an English translation, where it is titled the ‘Tipping of the scale plan’⁸ and the quotes below are taken from that translation.

After protesting the sincerity of his religious convictions, Smotrich begins:

This article is not a religious-faith manifesto, but a realistic, geopolitical and strategic plan. The plan is the result of an analysis of reality and its roots, and underpins factual, historical, democratic, security and political assumptions, leading to a solution that, to the best of my judgment, is the only one that has realistic feasibility - certainly compared to all the solutions proposed over a long period.

Ofer Cassif sees the Smotrich plan as having three key elements:

1. Israel must annex the occupied territories (then meaning the West Bank, now including Gaza), with no rights for Palestinian inhabitants.

2. Palestinians who did not accept their status as subjects would be expelled not just from their homes, but from their homeland.

3. Palestinians who resisted the imposition of this new regime would be killed.

Smotrich concludes his plan:

The Decision Plan is the only plan based on the vision of the Greater Israel. It is the only plan that has not given up on what was until recently the vision of the entire right, and it does not include the definition of any Arab national entity in the Land of Israel. It is the only plan that is not based on leaving an Arab collective with national aspirations, and for that reason it is the only plan that is based on resolving the conflict and not on maintaining it with varying intensity. And, above all, it is the only one that believes in the possibility of realising the dream of peace and coexistence and is not based on despair from this dream and its conversion into an impossible separation.

In Cassif’s view, security and revenge were only part of the motivation behind the Israeli war on Gaza. It was an opportunity to implement the Smotrich plan - an earlier opportunity having been thwarted by popular opposition to Netanyahu’s Judicial Reform programme.

As a hypothesis, it is consistent with what has happened in the course of the Gaza war, and may go some way to explaining what to most of us is the wholly disproportionate Israeli response to the October 7 2023 attack.

Comrade Cassif is very emphatic in his characterisation of the present Israeli administration, which he sees as a “fully fledged fascist government - with even worse elements than fascism”. Some may prefer Varoufakis’s view of it as “an alliance of disparate bigots”.

Ofer Cassif deserves our solidarity and support: he is one of the few voices in the Knesset who has consistently spoken out against the Zionist project and has from the beginning argued against the war in Gaza.