TEL AVIV – Terror group Hamas on Monday praised Arab lawmakers in Israel’s Knesset for protesting during Vice President Mike Pence’s speech and holding up signs reading “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.”
In an English-language tweet riddled with spelling mistakes, Hamas praised “Palestinian” members of Knesset from the Joint (Arab) List party for “refusing the racial speech” by the American vice president. Using the hashtag #alquds, which is the Arabic name for Jerusalem, the tweet said the city is the “eternal capital of #Palestine.”
The protesting MKs were ejected from the plenum after a melee of shouting and elbowing.
Israeli officials slammed the MKs behavior, with some saying they stood for the interests of terror groups and not Israel.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman tweeted that the Joint List “proved once again that they are representatives of terrorist organizations in the Knesset.”
“Their shameful behavior exposed to everyone their disloyalty to the state and its symbols. Only when Israeli Arabs allow other voices to represent them will there be a chance for true peace,” he added.
Oded Forer, an MK in Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, said the offending lawmakers should be suspended from the Knesset for “going wild.” He added that the Arab MKs “are heroes at protesting against Israel but enjoy receiving salaries from the State of Israel.”
Pence did not mention the protest in his speech, saying only that he was “humbled to speak before such a vibrant democracy.”
In his address, Pence vowed the Trump administration would relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of 2019, called on the Palestinians to return to negotiations and pledged that unless it was “fixed,” his country would scrap the “disastrous” Iran nuclear deal.
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