Israel’s High Court of Justice on Sunday narrowly upheld the candidacy of Arab leader Heba Yazbak, a member of the country’s parliament known as Knesset, overturning a January decision by Israel’s Central Elections Committee to bar her from running in the March 2 election over her alleged support of terror.
Efforts to bar Yazbak, a member of the Arab nationalist Balad party in the Joint List alliance, were based on two Facebook posts: one which she shared in 2015 that praised Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 took part in the brutal murder of members of an Israeli family in the northern city of Nahariya; and another that welcomed the end of a nine-year sentence for Amir Makhoul, who pleaded guilty to handing sensitive information to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. She was also criticised for statements she made that some have read as condoning violence against Israeli soldiers.