Joint List MK Haneen Zoabi told the Knesset Education Committee that “Israel has an army that hunts down Palestinian youths and kills them.” Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Knesset Education Committee convened Wednesday to discuss incitement against Israel and Israelis in the Palestinian Authority (PA) education system, and eventually removed MK Hanin Zoabi (Joint Arab List) after she told the committee that “Israel has an army that hunts down Palestinian youths and kills them.”

The meeting had been called by MKs Anat Berko (Likud), Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), and Merav Ben-Ari (Kulanu).

According to Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, at least 25 PA schools are named after terrorists. Dr. Arnon Gross, deputy director of the Voice of Israel Arabic Service, presented the committee with examples of incitement found in Palestinian textbooks.

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Joint Arab List members for encouraging violence and undermining the state, singling out MKs Zoabi and Basel Ghattas.

“It is unbelievable that an Israeli member of parliament calls for terror attacks against Israelis. There is nothing more justified than a criminal investigation against her,” Netanyahu said of Zoabi. “Anyone who calls for murder or justifies it is not worthy of belonging to this parliament.”

Zoabi responded by saying that Netanyahu had a “distorted interpretation” of her words. Yet she has a history of harsh anti-Israel rhetoric. In June 2014, when three Israeli teens were missing and believed to be held hostage by Palestinian terrorists, she said the perpetrators should not be called “terrorists.” (It was later discovered that the teens were executed by their Hamas captors shortly after the abduction.) She also accused the Israeli government and military of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.