As President Trump addressed the Knesset, receiving thunderous applause for his hawkish vision, Odeh and Cassif stood.
Their action was met with raw suppression. They were violently escorted out of the plenary chamber, forcibly removed from the space where voices are supposed to be heard. Yet, by doing so, the Hadash lawmakers’ voices became amplified far beyond that hall — carried through defiance into the conscience of the world.
During Trump’s speech, when the chamber filled with self-congratulatory applause, the “voices of the peoples” rang out instead from those two lawmakers. Amid the celebration of power and destruction, Odeh declared: “I was expelled from the plenary simply for asking the simplest demand — a demand with which the international community agrees: let there be recognition of a Palestinian state.”
He went on: “Recognize this simple reality: there are two peoples here, and no one is going anywhere.”
@AyOdeh and @ofercass have actually won the real Peace Prize, the one awarded by the people - not by staged committees. https://t.co/vqWkPN2Jwa
— In Defense of Communism © (@id_communism) October 13, 2025
Their removal is not a punishment but a badge of honor. In a chamber dominated by applause for violence, in a moment when the powerful rally themselves into ecstasy over bombs and bones, these two dared to speak the language of justice. They forced the world to watch.
The stakes are not procedural. More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli offensives in Gaza since October 2023, the vast majority women and children. Recognition of Palestinian statehood is not an act of charity — it is the bare minimum of moral accountability.
In refusing to bow to the applause of killers, Odeh and Cassif embody what it means to act with conscience in a place built on coercion and military might. Their courageous stance is a warning, a challenge, a call: the occupation must end, the recognition must come, and those who support war must answer.