LIKUD and other nationalist members of the Knesset violently disrupted a parliamentary conference organised by Hadash’s communist lawmakers against ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities — only to bring the occupation’s crimes to wider audiences.

The Israeli Knesset has almost never been a kind arena for supporters of Palestinian rights. In particular, during the four years of the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Smotrich coalition it has promoted laws of annexation, allocated mass funding for unlawful settlements and overseen the concurrent campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities all over the West Bank.

On Tuesday, a rare event challenged this trend. Hadash MPs Aida Touma-Sliman and Ofer Cassif brought to parliament the call to protect Palestinians and fight the occupation.

The two veteran communist lawmakers organised a parliamentary conference titled Transfer in Practice: Palestinian Communities Under Attack, wishing to shed light on the symbiosis between settler violence and state policy in the occupied West Bank.

When opening the conference, Touma-Sliman said that while many acknowledge the violence of “extreme settlers,” it is actually the auspices of the occupation and the policy of Netanyahu’s government that allows the crimes to occur, and all are “one and the same.”

Among the other speakers who highlighted the relations between the military, settlers and the political echelon were Jewish and Arab civil society, human rights organisations and defenders, jurists, religious leaders for peace and Palestinian victims of settler attack that spoke remotely.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese sent a video message for the conference, saying that “settler-colonial logic has escalated from apartheid to genocide” and that “everyone should be free, equal before the law and equal in access to justice.”

She also encouraged Israeli political and social activists to continue in their struggle, calling their actions “important for the Palestinians and the world.”

But the spotlight was forcefully stolen, along with the conference’s refreshments, by a group of fascist MPs led by the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vatury, far-right MP Limor Son Har Melech, chair of the house committee Ofer Katz and deputy minister Almog Cohen.

They infiltrated the conference, harassed the speakers, shouted vulgar racial slurs, vandalised the hall, smashed computers that operated the online screening and committed almost any other obscene act in order to disrupt the proper functioning of the event.

It was a brutal display of hooliganism and barbarism, completely legitimised by the Knesset’s own guarding force even though the conference received all the necessary approvals. It ultimately mimicked much of the same tactics used by actual settlers to disrupt Palestinian communities.

Hadash has voiced strong condemnation against the Knesset following the “political violence and censorship” that occurred, warning that similar acts of aggression and savagery by fascist elements of society may be directed against it during the upcoming election period.

But its leaders see the conference as success, not only because they managed to proceed with it amid the violent provocations, but also because the political mayhem helped to expose it to larger crowds.

As Dr Yousef Jabareen, the new electoral leader of Hadash has commented, “the crimes of the occupations and settlements were actually unveiled by the fascists today.”

Indeed, the fact that settler terrorism against Palestinian communities and the threats they face in all areas of the West Bank was given a prominent space in the Knesset is an achievement in itself.

Cassif pointed out that the fascist forces, those who believe in Jewish supremacy, are afraid of the truth and wish to silence those who speak it.

Events like this conference assist in uncovering it bit by bit, until the point where none can remain blind to the ugliness they try to hide.