Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman told the Supreme Court Tuesday that they support disqualifying Balad chairman Sami Abu Shahhdah from running in the upcoming Knesset election. The position follows the Central Elections Committee’s September 23 decision to bar Sami from the race. Under Israeli law, the disqualification must be approved by the Supreme Court before it can take effect.

In their submission, Baharav-Miara and Aisman argued that Sami's disqualification should be upheld because of what they described as his support for an armed struggle against Israel, including in the context of the October 7th massacre. They pointed specifically to an article Sami published on October 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas attack. According to the legal officials, the article expressed support for Hamas’s armed struggle against Israel and falls within the grounds for disqualification established under Basic Law: The Knesset.

The Central Elections Committee had previously accepted the petition against Sami by a vote of 31-4. The case is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court on Thursday.

The legal officials also rejected Sami’s subsequent explanations of the October 8 article and other evidence submitted against him, arguing that his explanations were partial and did not address the central allegations.

The Supreme Court’s review comes after lawyers representing Otzma Yehudit submitted a request to introduce additional evidence into the proceedings. They said their investigation following Samis’s testimony before the Central Elections Committee uncovered material they claim shows he continued expressing support for Hamas throughout the war.

Among the material submitted is a social media video published three days after October 7 in which Sami described the events as a major political and strategic development. Otzma Yehudit argues that he failed to condemn the massacre in the video and instead praised those it described as martyrs.

The party also submitted footage from the opening rally of its conference in which Sami criticized the Israeli public discourse surrounding October 7 and said the events were the result of what he described as “daily crimes" against Gaza.

Sami has rejected the allegations. During the Central Elections Committee proceedings, he said he opposes armed struggle and explained that when he wrote the October 8 article, he had not yet understood the full scale of the atrocities committed during the attack. He later said that had he known the extent of the killings at the time, he would not have published the article. His legal representatives have argued that the article did not call for violence and that Sami’s broader political record demonstrates opposition to harming civilians and support for a political solution.

National Security Minister and Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir welcomed the attorney general’s position, saying the evidence submitted against Sami could not be ignored. “It is unfortunate that instead of the attorney general and her office gathering the material against someone who supports our enemy, someone on our list did the work and organized the evidence that led to this position," Ben-Gvir said.

The Supreme Court will now determine whether the evidence meets the legal standard required to prevent Sami from running in the October 27 election.