Court system calls on Knesset to discipline Jewish Home MK

The head of the Israeli court system, Judge Michael Spitzer, on Sunday urged Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to take disciplinary action against Jewish Home MK Moti Yogev, saying recent comments by the right-wing politician encouraged “violence against Supreme Court justices.”

The unusual request, which was relayed in a letter, came after Yogev last week criticized a decision by Supreme Court Justice Uzi Vogelman to freeze an order to demolish terrorists’ homes, pending hearings on appeals against the demolition orders.

In a statement, Yogev had said Vogelman “placed himself on the side of [Israel’s] enemies.”

Spitzer on Sunday said Yogev’s comments were “inciting against a judge in the State of Israel since they amounted to permitting the spilling of Justice Vogelman’s blood.

“Yogev’s comments,” the letter continued, “compound his previous comments about the need to bulldoze the Supreme Court.”

In his statement last week, Yogev said that Vogelman’s injunction “defends the rights of murderers, thus preventing deterrent punitive measures and putting people’s lives at risk.”

Vogelman has been appointed a personal guard in recent days due to threats on his life in the wake of his injunction, Channel 10 reported.

Edelstein criticized Spitzer over the letter on Sunday, saying it was “inappropriate for an official, not matter how senior, to turn to the Knesset speaker, going over the heads of his superiors, in order to launch a personal attack against an elected Knesset member, and publish his statement even before he receives an answer.”

In late July, following a Supreme Court decision to demolish illegally built homes in the settlement of Beit El, Yogev, a vocal advocate of the settlement movement, said, “We have to take the blade of a D-9 [bulldozer] to the High Court of Justice.”

His comments drew immediate criticism from opposition lawmakers and the justice system alike.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of Yogev’s Jewish Home party, told Israeli media outlets that he had reprimanded the lawmaker in a private conversation.

Yogev himself then retracted the comments. Speaking to Israel Radio a day later, the MK said his comments were unnecessary and that it’s possible he shouldn’t have made them.

At the time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also issued a statement saying that “Israel is a law-abiding democracy that respects the court’s decision. That’s how it always was, and how it will be.”