Jewish Home MK Yogev went on to tell the delegation of his colleagues that Israel "is not your country," Middle East Eye reports. The delegation of Palestinian Israeli officials, including Knesset members Ahmad Tibi, Yousef Jabareen and Talab Abu Arar, were en route to Brussels where they planned to urge European officials to oppose the controversial Nation-State of the Jewish People law.
The Jewish Nation-State law states Israel is "the national home of the Jewish people" and has been integrated with the country's Basic Laws since July. Critics say the law is flawed in its omission of Palestinians, Druze and Circassians as being part of Israel's national character.
"We congratulate you for leaving Israel. This is what you want," Yogev said to the group of travelers. "Go to Paris, go to Britain, go to your anti-Semitic friends, go to whomever you want. Your place is in the departure lounge."
Tibi remarked that Yogev may have forgotten to take medication, saying, "Listen to your doctor's advice — take your medicine three times a day."
Tibi, an MK for Joint List, said August 31 that the nation state law both terrified and excited him, the Jerusalem Post reports. On one hand, Tibi is worried the law will justify heightened discrimination against Arab citizens in Israel. On the other, Tibi is "overjoyed," in the JPost's terms, by the fact that the "neo-fascist law," in Tibi's terms, makes it easier to convince the world that Israel is what Tibi says it is: a fascist state.
Tibi said the law hurts Arabs by destroying communities where Arabs live and building new ones for Jews to live. It also downgraded Arabic from an official language to a "special language," and failed to specify that Arabs have collective rights in Israel. Another issue Tibi has with the "apartheid law," as he calls it, is that it states Jerusalem will always be the undivided capital of Israel.
Palestinians comprise about 20 percent of Israel's population while many Druze serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. The law has sparked debate about whether Israeli truly recognizes the rights of its minority populations.
