"Go Back To Gaza, You Traitor!"

That's what MK Miri Regev to MK Haneen Zoabi said in the Knesset today:

The Knesset witnessed a rare eruption of violence on Wednesday when MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) was cursed and shoved after relating her experience as a passenger on the Mavi Marmara.

Knesset members from coalition and opposition parties alike sought to shout down the freshman MK, but the furor reached a climax when Anastasia Michaeli (Israel Beiteinu) charged the podium in an attempt to physically block Zoabi from continuing her speech.

It took a battery of ushers to remove MK Eli Aflalo (Kadima), who was called to order three times but remained standing in an aisle yelling and gesticulating until he was forcibly removed.

During the pandemonium, Arab and Jewish MKs scuffled in the aisles, and ushers were summoned to separate them.

“Go back to Gaza, you traitor!” MK Miri Regev (Likud) yelled in Arabic at Zoabi during the heated debate on the Free Gaza flotilla.

Zoabi was released from police custody early Tuesday morning.

At the podium, Zoabi said she was “astonished by the incitement” and “despised the words” she had heard during the Knesset debate on the Monday morning incident.

The line from the title is horrible, but even worse is the attempt by other MKs to forcibly prevent her from speaking. Is Israel a democracy, or isn't it? You can't eat your cake and have it too.

Edit: I do have to admit that the asshat who yelled "check if she has a knife!" comes in a close second. And the move to try to expel members of the Knesset who "were found to have committed incitement against the State of Israel" comes in pretty high too. That would be nothing more than a license to expel critics of Government policy at will, and render the Knesset into an Iraqi- or Iranian-style rubber-stamp Parliament. The people of Israel, no matter their ethnicity and religion, deserve better than that.