Nixed Zionist Union ad tied Bennett to Rabin’s killer

A shelved Zionist Union campaign poster would have made a connection between the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the leader of the national religious Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, Channel 2 reported Friday.

The placard which was under consideration by the Labor-Hatnua union would have read “Yigal Amir votes Bennett,” quoting a Channel 2 report from January which alleged that Rabin’s killer had urged his family to vote for the right-wing party in the coming election.

Amir’s mother Geula confirmed the report at the time.

The banner was already being designed when incoming campaign manager Reuven Adler nixed it, according to the report.

Adler, a public relations specialist who led Likud’s Ariel Sharon to electoral victory in 2001 and 2003, as well as Ehud Olmert and Kadima in 2006, was recruited this week to the Zionist Union in a bid to breathe new life into its campaign.

A computer mock-up of the placard as shared by Naftali Bennett on Facebook 

Despite opposition from several campaign strategists, Adler ruled the ad to be inconsistent with his line of focusing the parties’ attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only.

Questioned on the issue by Channel 2, the Zionist Union gave a different version of events, claiming that the ad was merely the initiative of a few young activists which was immediately dismissed by Adler.

Bennett himself has written on his Facebook page in response to news of the canceled poster that Labor has “learned nothing from the assassination of Rabin,” and accused the left of running a dangerous “incitement” campaign against him.

Bennett was assigned a 24-hour security detail Thursday, after posters depicting the Jewish Home leader as Hitler with a swastika on his forehead appeared in Jerusalem. The nationalist politician was also caught in a violent confrontation Wednesday when gay rights activists clashed with Jewish Home supporters as Bennett was due to speak in Haifa. Bennett later claimed that the activists in the confrontation were members of the Labor party.