A provocative Israeli MP caused a political and social media storm earlier this week when he signed a petition in support of South Africa's genocide case against Israel, which will be heard at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Ofer Cassif, who declared his support for South Africa on social media, will support the country's legal proposal when it appears before the ICJ on Thursday and Friday this week.
“My constitutional duty is to Israeli society and all its residents,” he wrote in X on January 7. “Not with a government whose members and their coalition are calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide. “It is they who harm the country and the people, it is they who led South Africa to appeal to The Hague, not me and my friends.”
The Palestinian death toll from nearly 100 days of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has surpassed 23,000 people, including nearly 10,000 children.
Who is Ofer Cassif?
Cassif is a politician from the left-wing, majority-Arab party Hadash-Ta'al, Hadash being the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. Born in Rishon LeZion, near Tel Aviv, in 1964, he has been a member of the Israeli parliament for almost five years.
Cassif has a PhD in political philosophy from the London School of Economics and was an academic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before entering parliament.
His tendency to go against the grain of Israeli society is not new. In the late 1980s, the pro-Palestinian Israeli, who is also a proud communist, spent time in prison for refusing to serve as a soldier in the occupied territories.
In 2021, he claimed that he was beaten by police while participating in a protest against an illegal Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
His pre-parliamentary attacks on the State of Israel – for example, calling former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum” – led the Central Electoral Committee to keep him out of the 2019 elections.
However, that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court and he was elected that year, with Hadash-Ta'al receiving just under 4.5 percent of the national vote and six seats in the Knesset. This compares with more than 26 percent of the vote and 35 seats each for Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and Kahol Lavan, the opposition political alliance led by former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who is also a member of the cabinet. Netanyahu's war.
Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Program, called Cassif “an anomaly in Israeli politics.”
“The vast majority of Israeli Knesset members are serving in Zionist parties, and this is not the case with Cassif,” Mekelberg said of the anti-Zionist politician.
He angered some by refusing to take a stance supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Knesset via Zoom in March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion, Cassif refused to attend.
“I do not take sides in an unnecessary war that harms innocent civilians, strengthens people in power and enriches warlords,” Cassif said in a tweet. “I do not support nationalists and persecutors of communists in Ukraine, and no, I do not support Putin or Russian nationalists who hate communists either. No to war, yes to peace.”
What is your vision for Palestine?
Cassif is a strong supporter of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
In December 2023, during a conversation transcribed on the website of the Communist Party of Israel, he said: “The Palestinians, as a people, have the right to have their own independent state.
“The compromise is to divide the land together with the State of Israel, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, which would exist in the former territories that Israel occupied in June 1967. That means the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. There is no other way.”
He strongly opposes Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories and has protested against them. In February 2022, she joined protesters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where they were evicting families from their homes so they could relocate settlers.
What has Cassif's position been like before the Israeli people?
Mal. Cassif is one of just 400 Israelis, in a population of nearly 9.5 million, who signed a petition in support of South Africa's lawsuit against Israel. As a member of the Knesset, his public act of defiance has fallen like a red rag before a bull.
In the wake of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, which led the country to unleash its aerial bombing campaign against Gaza, Cassif was suspended from the Knesset for 45 days for criticizing the war.
Fellow Israeli parliamentarian Oded Forer called Cassif's decision to oppose his home country “traitor,” adding that his “words can no longer be heard while the blood of our soldiers and citizens screams from the ground.”
Forer is currently collecting signatures from lawmakers in an attempt to expel Cassif from the Knesset. Under Knesset rules, Forer needs to convince 70 members of parliament to support her candidacy, and then gain approval from the Knesset House of Representatives Committee, before parliament can vote on Cassif's expulsion. .
But Cassif seems to enjoy the turmoil of Israel's volatile political scene. “In many ways, he is more of an activist than a parliamentarian,” Mekelberg said of Cassif. “And what you see is what you get.”
Cassif lost friends in the Hamas attack, which killed some 1,139 people. In fact, in an October 19, 2023 interview with New York-based Waging Nonviolence, he called the Hamas incursion “morally despicable.”
But in the same interview, 12 days after Israel began its bombing of Gaza, he told the nonprofit media organization that his vocal rejection of Israel's military response had led to him being “brutally attacked by right-wing Israelis.” , including death threats, from my point of view.”
He added: “They simply cannot tolerate and would not like to accept that I, and everyone else, can show sympathy and empathy for the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time showing sympathy and care for the people of Israel. It is not a contradiction.”
What do pro-Palestinian Israelis think of him?
On social media, global supporters of Palestinian rights have praised Cassif's decision to go public with his stance on South Africa's ICJ case against Israel. However, on the ground in Israel itself, opinions about him among the pro-Palestinian left are a little more nuanced.
“He is someone we respect and support for his stance against genocide, even though there are some political differences with some of us,” said Neta Golan, an active member of Israelis Against Apartheid.
Ofer Neiman, an Israeli pro-Palestinian activist from Jerusalem, said he believes Cassif is too “soft” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neiman added: “I [also] I don't agree with him on… [his] reluctance to consider options beyond the two-state solution. But here the focus is on Palestine and the genocide. So, simply put, he is a fellow dissident to me.”
