Balad Party Chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh submitted his response to the disqualification request filed against him by the Otzma Yehudit Party to the Central Elections Committee.
The disqualification motion, filed through attorneys Zeev Wolf and David Babli, revolves around an article published by Abu Shehadeh on October 8, 2023 – the day after Hamas' murderous terrorist attack began.
Now, three years after the article was published, Abu Shehadeh is required to explain to the Central Elections Committee what exactly he intended to say at that time.
In his response, Abu Shehadeh claims that the article did not include support for terrorism: "An interpretation of reality is not its justification. There is no praise for Hamas or support for armed struggle in my words. There is a call to expropriate the leadership from Hamas in order to advance a political-state plan.".
Abu Shehadeh justifies his words by saying that he was unaware of the extent of the disaster at the time of writing, and claims: "My intention was to warn against the continuation of the 'campaign', which was mistakenly translated as 'battle.'".
This claim is made even though, at the time of the article's publication on October 8, residents of Kibbutz Be'eri and other communities in the Gaza Envelope were still besieged in their homes, under fire and in fear for their lives, and when extensive reports had already been published about hundreds of murdered people and dozens of kidnapped people being held in the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, his lawyers are not currently trying to present the publication of the article as a successful decision. The response states that Abu Shehadeh "honestly made it clear that in retrospect he believes he was wrong and erred in publishing it." Later, they add another cautious formulation: the article "is not without its problems.".
