Ayman Odeh talks to Dov Khenin, March 2015. Demotix/ Mahmoud Illean. All rights reserved.Earlier this year there were two billboards glaring at drivers from the verge of Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv bearing messages intended to scare them into voting in the Knesset elections on 17 March 2015. One said, sarcastically, “Thank you, Salim”, and displayed a diabolically smirking Avigdor Lieberman. The other, identical in tone and design, stated “Thank you, Bat-El”, and showed a gleefully laughing Hanin Zoabi. Underneath each face was the explanation: “When you don’t participate in elections, your vote goes to someone else.”
It is understandable why the prospect of Avigdor Lieberman continuing to find a place in the government of the country would be alarming for someone with an Arab name like Salim. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party’s proposed solution for the territorial conflict between the Palestinians and Israel involves stripping some Palestinians and other Arabs living in the state of their Israeli citizenship, and demanding that those who do want to retain the ‘privilege’ of citizenship express loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. One version of a proposed bill requiring the identification of Israel primarily as a Jewish state rather than a state of its citizens was approved in a symbolic gesture by the government on 23 November 2014.
