Israeli Supreme Court unanimously rejects 'Jewish Power' party’s request to disqualify Arab Joint List from participating in elections

26/08/2019

Adalah: 'Jewish Power' knew full well they had no evidence allowing disqualification of Joint List. Their single goal was to promote doctrine of Meir Kahane and to disseminate lies regarding Arab representatives.

The Israeli Supreme Court decided unanimously on 25 August 2019 to reject the "Jewish Power" party's request to disqualify the Arab Joint List from participating in Israel's upcoming 17 September national elections.

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel represented the Arab Joint List in the Central Election Committee (CEC) and Supreme Court hearings considering the request submitted by Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir and the Jewish Power (“Otzma Yehudit”) party to disqualify the Joint List from participating in the upcoming parliamentary election.

Supreme Court justices decided by a unanimous 9-0 vote on Sunday evening to disallow the Jewish Power party's request.

Most of the evidence included with the disqualification request filed by Ben Gvir and the Jewish Power party had already been rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court when it was provided with a previous attempt to disqualify the Joint List last April. The only new evidence was based on misrepresented facts and racist commentary that negate the demand of Arab elected officials for equal citizenship.

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Adalah issued a response immediately following the announcement of the Supreme Court decision on Monday night, 25 August 2019:

“Members of the Jewish Power party know full well that they had no evidence that would allow the disqualification of the Joint List from the upcoming election. Their single goal was to create a public stage upon which they could promote the doctrine of Meir Kahane and to disseminate lies regarding the Arab citizenry’s public representatives. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision this evening confirms and reinforces its April ruling that also denied the disqualification of the Joint List, and simply proves that the sole motivation behind ‘Jewish Power’’s motion was to promote their racist view that Arabs should not demand equal citizenship”.

CLICK HERE to read the Supreme Court decision [Hebrew]

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