Ex-Shin Bet head Dichter slams Joint List leader's 'murder' claim

Likud MK says he’s ‘proud’ he sent Hamas founders ‘deep into the earth,’ Odeh ‘represents Hamas’ in Knesset

Knesset member Avi Dichter (Likud) on Tuesday hit back at accusations by Joint (Arab) List leader Ayman Odeh that he had ordered the murders of PLO chief Yasser Arafat and Hamas co-founders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi while he headed Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet.

Writing on his Facebook page, Dichter said he was “proud to have had the privilege” of sending Yassin and Rantisi “deep into the earth,” one within a month of the other, in early 2004.

Odeh’s comment came in the context of a stormy Knesset debate surrounding a law that would allow MKs to vote to suspend fellow lawmakers.

Interviewed on Channel 2, Odeh said Dichter was allowed to remain as a lawmaker despite having ordered the murder of Palestinian leaders.

Ayman Odeh (left) and Nissan Slomiansky interviewed on February 29, 2016 (Channel 2 screenshot)

“There are Shin Bet heads who gave orders to murder the leaders of the Palestinian people – people who are in the coalition….. For example [Avi] Dichter sent people who murdered Arafat, and Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and Rantisi, and he is in the Knesset. People who sent people to murder people are members of Knesset,” he said.

With his “unfortunate statement,” Odeh had become “the representative of Hamas leaders in the Knesset and abandoned the security of Israel’s citizens – Jews as well as Arabs,” Dichter said.

Dichter said he was honored to have had the job of “protecting Israeli citizens, including Israeli Arabs and Odeh himself, from the murderous terror led by the same people Ayman Odeh defends.”

A Palestinian boy rides his bike past graffiti depicting (from L to R) late founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) George Habash, late Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, on November 21, 2014 in Gaza City. (photo credit: AFP/MOHAMMED ABED)

Various Palestinian leaders, and Arafat’s widow Suha, have claimed since the PLO chief’s death that Israel assassinated him, an accusation Israel has always denied.

Arafat died in Percy military hospital near Paris at the age of 75 in November 2004, after complaining of stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. French investigators last April announced they had not found evidence he had been poisoned, and a French prosecutor subsequently closed the case.

Israel killed Hamas leaders Yassin and Rantisi in Gaza air raids in 2004.