Two weeks ago, three Arab members of Israel’s legislature visited the families of terrorists killed while carrying out deadly attacks and praised the killers as martyrs. The Knesset’s ethics committee temporarily suspended the three as a result. Now the Knesset is considering constitutional changes to streamline the procedure for such suspensions, prompting cries that Israeli democracy is being fatally undermined. Eylon Aslan-Levy responds:
Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would sponsor an amendment to the Basic Law . . . enabling the Knesset plenary itself to suspend or even expel members for ethics violations. . . . Far from undermining Israeli democracy, . . . the proposal brings Israel in line with other Western liberal democracies, many of which already have legal mechanisms for a legislature to hold unruly members accountable through suspension or expulsion. . . .
The United States Constitution, for example, empowers each house of Congress to expel any member by a two-thirds vote. . . . The House of Representatives has used [this power] as recently as 2002. . . Crucially, the Israeli proposal is considerably stricter than its American equivalent, since it would require an absolute majority of three-quarters of legislators rather than only two-thirds of those present and voting. . . . In the United Kingdom, the bar [for the suspension of MPs] is even lower. . . .
[Indeed], the inability of the Knesset to suspend membership . . . is the exception, not the norm.
Read more on Mida: http://mida.org.il/2016/02/17/the-knesset-expulsion-law-is-moderate-and-necessary/