MK Ayman Odeh is one of the Israeli left's most adored Arab MKs. In essence, he is everything they prayed for, their poster-child Arab. He is charismatic, says what they want to hear, pleasantly and with a smile. Around a year and a half ago, he posted a tweet that broke records for adulation in the Israeli Twitterverse. Alongside a photo of him reading a story to his three children, he wrote: "At the end of a long day, I need to out these three existential threats to bed!"
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This is Ayman Odeh in Hebrew. Witty with a sharp sense of humor, a person in search of justice and peace, humane, the legitimate left.
He doesn't give up and doesn't gloss over his ideological message, even in Hebrew, but he does maintain very sophisticated and clear boundaries. Yes, he puts forth messages of Jewish-Arab partnership. "The government wants to separate Jews and Arabs. They are lost – we have a way," he wrote in the wake of the riots that he himself inflamed, in his own way, in Hebrew. Even when discussing Gaza and Jerusalem he employed relatively delicate language. "We've come to Sheikh Jarrah to support the struggle of the residents against eviction," he wrote. "This struggle belongs to anyone who aspires to peace, equality and democracy." Who can't empathize with such a message of conciliation? In another tweet in Hebrew, he criticized MK Itamar Ben-Gvir and Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Aryeh King. "It's important to remember there are public officials who are fanning the violence and encouraging the oppression, including members of Knesset and the deputy mayor," he wrote.
But like a person who becomes a werewolf at midnight, the affable Odeh in Hebrew turns into a dangerous inciter in Arabic. On Wednesday, when thousands of young men and women flooded the streets of Jerusalem with Israeli flags, and when Hamas was issuing threats of war and burning fields and crops in the western Negev, Odeh gave an interview in Arabic, of course, and threw gasoline on the fire. "On the walls here, in this precise spot, the flag of Palestine will be raised and Jerusalem will be the capital of occupied Palestine… Our Palestinian nation will cause them to feel ashamed and withdraw from these areas." Gone were the messages of conciliation, as Arab rioters were shattering the windows of the Justice Ministry building on nearby Salah al-Din Street. Those rioters are not just fringe youths lashing out haphazardly, they have leadership and that leadership is dangerous.
This was not the first time the Left's baby has agitated and incited rebellion. In early May, as Arab rioters clashed with Israeli police at Damascus Gate, he called for an intifada [uprising] in Arabic. "… Until there is a decisive intifada that ends the occupation and raises the flag of Palestine over the Al-Aqsa mosque, over the churches in Jerusalem and over the gates of liberated Jerusalem," he said. The Arab outlaws in Jerusalem who slapped innocent bystanders in the face on the light rail, who poured boiling coffee on a Jewish man in the street, who lynched a Jewish man walking his dog – are those he described in a post he wrote in Arabic as "the youth of Jerusalem who are rising up against the occupation." How romantic.
By the way, did you know that Odeh's parliamentary aid was arrested? Of course not. It happened at the height of riots, and Odeh, in Arabic, called it a "revenge arrest." No one asked or knew why his aid had been arrested – because the interview was in Arabic.
Anyone truly interested in knowing who MK Ayman Odeh truly is should not be blinded by the amiable Ayman in Hebrew. That's when he only says what you want to hear.
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