Heba Yazbak
Heba Yazbak was born in 1985 and is a member of the secular Arab nationalist Balad party in Israel. She was first elected to the Knesset in April 2019 as part of the Joint List. She is a member of Balad’s Politburo and previously directed the Working Group for Equality in Personal Status Issues and Action Committee for Equality in Marital Relations.
In January 2020, the Knesset’s Central Elections Committee banned Yazbak from running in the March 2020 elections over accusations that she “systematically, for years, supported terrorists and spies who have committed horrific crimes against the State of Israel and its residents.” These allegations stemmed from two Facebook posts she made: one of which praised Samir Kuntar – a militant affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Front and Lebanese Hizballah involved in the murder of Israeli family members in the northern city of Nahariya in 1979. The Knesset’s ban was subsequently overturned by Israel’s High Court.