DHAKA: The kidnappers of three yeshiva students last weekend are not terrorists, Israel’s parliament member Hanin Zoabi (Balad) said Tuesday.

‘They’re people who don’t see any way to change their reality and they are forced to use these means until Israel will wake up a little, until Israeli citizens and society will wake up and feel the suffering of the other,’ Zoabi said in an interview on Radio Tel Aviv, adding that the kidnappers live under occupation.

‘So an Israeli MK is openly justifying the kidnapping of Israeli boys?’ the interviewer, Sharon Gal, asked

‘I’m not surprised at all,’ she responded, reports The Jerusalem Post.

‘I’m surprised you’re still walking around freely,’ Gal said, and Zoabi hung up on him.

Immediately after the interview, Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Liberman said ‘not only are the kidnappers terrorists, Hanin Zoabi is a terrorist too’.

‘The fate of the kidnappers and the fate of the inciter who encourages kidnapping Hanin Zoabi should be the same,’ Liberman added.

Knesset Interior Committee chairwoman Miri Regev (Likud Beytenu) said ‘Hanin Zoabi is a traitor and should be deported to Gaza’.

BDST: 1500 HRS, JUNE 17, 2014