Mandelblit: Labor candidate can’t be banned for ignoring IDF Memorial Day

The Central Elections Committee is set to consider a petition to bar Labor’s No. 7 candidate Ibtisam Mara’ana from running in the upcoming parliamentary vote at a hearing on Wednesday. Even if she is disqualified, the Supreme Court could overturn the decision, as it has often done in the past with other candidates disqualified by the committee.

The petition was filed by Labor member Maozia Segal, an IDF veteran who was badly injured during his service, and backed by other party members as well as the right-wing Likud, New Hope and Religious Zionism parties. It calls for her removal from the Labor slate for declaring in the past that she had deliberately ignored an annual two minutes of silence held on Memorial Day, which honors Israel’s fallen soldiers and terror victims, as well as other comments that the petitioners consider anti-Zionist or supportive of terrorism.

The chief controversy stems from a 2012 social media post by Mara’ana in which she wrote that she had continued to drive her car as the annual memorial siren sounded. The majority of drivers in Israel stop during the siren and stand by their vehicle.

In the post, Mara’ana wrote: “I did not stand during the siren, I was driving while the whole country was almost silent. I decided to keep going and there were two wonderful minutes during the siren. The road was empty, I kept thinking about what really interested me at that moment.”

Mandelblit said that after reviewing Mara’ana’s statements, some of which she has apologized for, he does not believe they pass the threshold determined by the law to justify preventing her from running.

According to the Basic Law: The Knesset, a slate or individual candidate can disqualified if their goals or actions, either explicitly or implicitly, deny the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or support an armed struggle of an enemy state or terrorist organization.