No one should be surprised by the Israeli Knesset's decision to suspend Palestinian Member of Parliament Haneen Zoabi due to her participation in last year's bloody Gaza Flotilla.

The Knesset Ethics Committee, which investigated her flotilla participation, is punishing Zoabi for exercising her legitimate right of political activism. Essentially, it is silencing an Arab member for representing her constituency. The bigger picture reveals that it is trying to wipe out any Arab presence in the Israeli government.

This was a strictly political decision, which came through from a racist committee. Israel is doing all it can to ‘cleanse' the country, including occupied Jerusalem, of Arab identity. Recently, the Israeli Jerusalem municipality endorsed a campaign to rename Arab street names and monuments in occupied east Jerusalem thereby judaising it further. And last week, Israel issued an anti-boycott law that essentially makes it an offence to call for a boycott against the state of Israel or the Occupied Territories' colonies.

Here's a country that claims to be the Middle East's only democracy. This is far from democracy. These are the acts of a racist state that treats its Arab citizens as inferior and forbids freedom of expression. It's despicable that this racist state continues to enjoy unlimited support from its western friends.