Netanyahu’s Election Day talk of Arabs voting in droves was ‘not racist’

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein’s office ruled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to Likud voters on Election Day to go out and vote because “Arabs in droves” were heading to the polls did not constitute incitement to racism.

Netanyahu made the comment on the afternoon of March 17 when voter turnout was still quite low. Filmed sitting in an office with a map of the Middle East behind him, Netanyahu said “Arabs are going to the ballot boxes in droves, they are being bused in by left-wing NGOs.”

The comments immediately drew fire, with Netanyahu’s opponents saying he was inciting to racism against Israeli citizens exercising their democratic right to vote.

Two weeks ago, some eight months after the comment was made, Weinstein sent a response to a query by Rishon Lezion resident Harel Primak, who alleged in a letter to Weinstein that Netanyahu had violated Clause 144 of the Penal Code.

According to Haaretz, the answer to Primak was sent in a letter signed by an aide to Weinstein, attorney Amit Isman. In the letter, Isman said the prime minister called on his supporters “to go out and vote in light of the turnout in the Israeli-Arab public.” He did not quote Netanyahu precisely and omitted the conspiratorial-sounding allegation that “left wing groups are bringing them in buses.”

Primak wrote to Weinstein that Netanyahu broke the law because his call met the definition of “persecution, humiliation, degrading, expression of hate, hostility or violence against a public or part of the population, all based on race or affiliation with an ethnic identity or nationality,” as the law states.

But Isman in his letter said Netanyahu had no intention of inciting to racism, and “that there was no room for a criminal investigation” into the matter. Nisman signed the letter to Primak, but the decision was made with the approval of Weinstein and State Prosecutor Shay Nitzan, Haaretz reported.

Isman also noted in the letter that after the election, Netanyahu had hosted representatives of the Arab, Druze and Circassian communities in his office in Jerusalem, and mentioned that Netanyahu had attempted to walk back his comments.

The letter does not clarify why it took the office of the Attorney General eight months to respond.