Speaking ahead of anniversary of ex-PM’s killing, minister singles out Likud leader and Ben Gvir for roles in incitement; Likud sources: She’s desperate to cross Knesset threshold
Oct 27, 2022
Labor party chief Merav Michaeli on Thursday accused opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of being complicit in the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Speaking at a conference organized by the Yisrael Hayom newspaper ahead of Saturday night’s memorial ceremony marking 27 years since the 1995 assassination, Michaeli also singled out Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit’s MK Itamar Ben Gvir.
“Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in a political assassination. He was murdered in a political assassination with the cooperation of Benjamin Netanyahu and [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” Michaeli said.
Netanyahu has been repeatedly accused by the left over the years of encouraging incitement that led to Rabin’s killing, or at the very least of contributing to the incendiary political climate that led to the murder. He has rejected such claims as “attempts to distort the historical truth.”
Ben Gvir, the rising star of the current election campaign, whose Religious Zionism party is seen heading for some 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, first captured national attention when he was filmed as a teen boasting about stealing an emblem from Rabin’s car a short time before the assassination.
“We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too,” he told a reporter at the time in televised comments.
In response to Michaeli’s accusation, sources close to Netanyahu told Channel 12 that she is “doing everything to clear the Knesset threshold. Nothing is sacred to her, not even Rabin. She’s trying to delegitimize the entire right-wing camp.”
Ben Gvir said, “Michaeli’s dangerous incitement repeatedly crosses red lines and legitimizes harming me. It’s not for nothing that the level of threats against me has risen recently and the Knesset guard has had to increase its security for me.”
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