Israel’s Bar Association Unlawfully Suspends Lawyer Maha Ighbaria for Social Media Posts

On 27 November 2025, the Disciplinary Court of the Bar Association in the District of Tel Aviv, suspended the license to practice law of lawyer Maha Ighbaria, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, for one year. The court convicted her of “unprofessional conduct as a lawyer” and “offending the dignity of the legal profession” in connection with two posts she made on her private Facebook page. She posted the first at 7:30 a.m. on October 7, 2023, writing, “Good morning Gaza”.; on the following day, in response to comments from Jewish-Israeli friends, she wrote in the second post, “I have always been and will always be on the side of my people, wherever they are, and by any form of resistance they choose that is legitimate against occupation, siege, and apartheid.”

Adalah, which represented Ighbaria in the proceedings, condemned the decision as extreme, disproportionate, and exceeding the Bar Association’s authority. “Attorney Ighbaria published these posts in a personal capacity, outside her professional work as a lawyer, and has not been criminally indicted,” argued Adalah Attorneys Dr. Hassan Jabareen and Salam Irsheid. “She further explicitly condemned violence on October 7, 2023, as is evident from her Facebook page.”

The case reflects a disturbing trend whereby the Israel Bar Association (IBA) increasingly targets Arab lawyers for political speech, while ignoring similar or far more extreme statements by Jewish-Israeli lawyers. Adalah presented multiple examples of Jewish lawyers posting openly racist or violent statements toward Palestinians, including calls which amount to incitement to genocide, and in response to which the IBA has taken no disciplinary action. For example, in a WhatsApp group of lawyers in the Haifa district, one lawyer wrote, “As a people, we have one goal – a crater in Gaza,” and later, “…I want to see a crater in Gaza… for me, there are no innocents there.” Another lawyer responded, “I promised… that we would support the establishment of a crater, a high-quality tourist site without local residents.”

The IBA initiated the proceedings following a complaint from, and maintained continuous contact with, Shai Glick, CEO of the right-wing organization B’Tsalmo, whose stated goal is to suppress free expression among Arab citizens and left-wing activists. Conducting a proceeding in coordination with an individual engaged in such efforts raises serious concerns of bias, discrimination, and bad-faith conduct within the IBA. Adalah will appeal the suspension to Israel’s National Disciplinary Court.

Maha Ighbaria stated:
“I have never supported, and will never support, any act of violence. Those who know me understand the principles that guide me. I will exhaust every legal avenue to overturn this disgraceful ruling. In any other country, a bar association protects all lawyers. In Israel, that protection is effectively reserved for Jewish-Israelis only.”