Adalah Petitions Supreme Court Against Suspension of MK Ofer Cassif for Speaking Out Against Israeli War Crimes and Genocide
The Knesset’s Ethics Committee has suspended MK Cassif five times since December 2022, for a total of ten months; Adalah argued that these illegal suspections strip him of his ability to perform his parliamentary duties.
On 15 October 2025, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Israel on behalf of MK Dr. Ofer Cassif (of the Hadash-Ta’al political party) against a decision of the Knesset Ethics Committee, dated 9 July 2025, to suspend him from participating in Knesset plenary and committee sessions (except for voting) for two months, starting from 19 October 2025.
Case citation HCJ 14202-10-2025 MK Ofer Cassif v. The Knesset’s Ethics Committee et al.
CLICK HERE to read the petition [Hebrew]
The Committee’s decision is the latest in a series of five disciplinary sanctions imposed on him during the 25th Knesset term, resulting in a cumulative suspension of ten months from Knesset work, including three sanctions imposed since the outbreak of the war on Gaza. It also follows an unsuccessful attempt to expel him from the Knesset, which fell short in the plenum by just five votes.
The Committee’s decision cited several statements and actions by MK Cassif, including:
Social media post from 8 October 2024 stating, “Those who remained silent and did nothing when my people and family were massacred in Europe 80 years ago are the same as those who remain silent and do nothing while Palestinians are being massacred now in Gaza.”
On 6 December 2024: “The painful and horrific truth must be shouted from every corner: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and the killers persist in their deadly drive.”
On 8 February 2025, during a protest, held a sign calling to reject the genocide, occupation, and ethnic cleansing, and criticized government policies in Gaza and the West Bank.
On 26 May 2025, in a Knesset speech, he referred to Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “war crimes” and urged soldiers not to follow illegal orders.
In its decisions, the Committee stated, “The Ethics Committee has traditionally viewed any use of Holocaust imagery or comparisons to the Holocaust as a grave matter, and considered it a serious violation of the dignity of the Knesset and of public trust in the institution.” It further stated that, “statements claiming that the State of Israel is committing a ‘massacre in Gaza’ and ‘ethnic cleansing in the West Bank’ constitute a violation of the Ethics Rules, as they accuse the State of Israel and IDF soldiers of committing war crimes.”
Petition
The petition challenges the Knesset Ethics Committee’s decision of 9 July in light of the repeated and cumulative sanctions imposed by the Knesset’s Ethics Committee against MK Cassif. It argues that the Committee – a political body composed of Knesset members – has used its disciplinary powers to silence dissent and punish legitimate political expression in this case.
The petition asserts that Cassif’s statements fall squarely within the scope of protected political expression and form part of the core duties of an elected representative. By treating terms such as “war crimes,” “genocide,” or “ethnic cleansing” as ethical violations, the Committee has turned the legitimate use of international legal terminology into grounds for disciplinary action, while ignoring harsher – and even genocidal – statements made by other Jewish-Israeli members of the Knesset. For instance, MK Nissim Vaturi, who called on the military to “burn Gaza now,” and MKs Tali Gottlieb and Simcha Rothman, who accused Arab MKs of “supporting the enemy” and being “spokesmen for Hamas,” received minimal or no sanctions. This selective, discriminatory enforcement of the Knesset’s ethical standards is part of a broader effort to suppress anti-war voices and silence members of the political minority – in particular Palestinian and left-wing elected representatives – whose views challenge the dominant Israeli-Zionist consensus.
The petition argues that the cumulative effect of these sanctions is the partial removal of an elected representative from the Knesset, a move that prevents MK Cassif from fulfilling his parliamentary duties on behalf of his constituents, for a total of ten months thus far. Adalah therefore called on the Supreme Court to annul the Committee’s latest decision and to establish clear judicial criteria to limit the Committee’s powers, in order to prevent their further use as a tool for political persecution and suppressing dissent.
Earlier this year, the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians issued a decision concerning MK Cassif’s earlier suspension. The IPU found that, “In suspending Mr. Cassif, the Knesset Ethics Committee punished him on account of his rightful exercise of freedom of speech by expressing a political position against the State of Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza; and considers, therefore, that Mr. Cassif’s suspension was arbitrary and that it hinders his ability to exercise the mandate entrusted to him by his constituents and to represent them effectively in the Knesset.
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