Incitement is the word of the day

The word “incitement,” which features prominently in the headlines of today’s papers, serves as fair representation of the feelings of suspicion and distrust subtly filling the minds of different segments of the population in relation to one another. The 20th anniversary of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at the hands of Yigal Amir seems to have stirred up long-repressed memories of the toxic atmosphere ahead of, and after, the murder, as the country’s dailies express a fear that once again, mere words may have devastating consequences.

“[He] Incited and was arrested,” Yedioth’s headline reads alongside a picture of Hagai Amir, Yigal Amir’s brother and accomplice to the assassination of Rabin. Hagai Amir, who was released from prison in mid-2012 after serving a 16-year sentence for his role in the political assassination, was detained on Tuesday over a Facebook post stating that President Reuven Rivlin and the “Zionist state” would soon “depart from this world.”

Yedioth plays up the significance of Hagai Amir’s recent statements, claiming boldly that though 20 years have passed since the assassination, “nothing has changed,” a nod to the fact that neither Amir brother has never expressed any form of regret over the murder of Rabin. The paper makes sure to note dryly that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not condemn Hagai Amir’s statements, most probably in an attempt to subtly remind readers of the Israeli leader’s silence in face of the often vitriolic and violent discourse heard on Israel’s streets during the months leading up to the assassination.

In Israel Hayom, the fear of incitement is projected onto Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who was sentenced to 11 months of jail time for incitement to violence and racism, after a recent appeal he made was rejected. “The price of incitement – Salah to prison,” reads the paper’s top story. The daily calls Salah one of the “primary inciters spreading the ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ libel,” a reference to persistent Palestinian allegations to the effect that Israel seeks to change the arrangements at the Temple Mount compound in order to allow Jews to pray there. Israel has repeatedly denied these accusations and stressed it has no intention of changing the status quo at the holy site, considered holy both to Jewish and Muslim believers.

Salah was convicted in connection with a sermon he delivered in 2007 in Jerusalem, and will begin serving his sentence in November. “A huge crowd follows him,” Israel Hayom says in quote attributed to the court, highlighting the reason it chose to dedicate almost its entire front page to Salah’s sentence.

Another article in Israel Hayom on 76-year-old Richard Lakin, who died yesterday after succumbing to wounds sustained when he was shot and stabbed during last week’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, also has the word incitement in its headline. The paper quotes Lakin’s son, who blamed the raging amount of incitement and instances of hate speech on social media as the underlying cause for his father’s murder by Palestinian terrorists.

Hagai Amir’s perceived threats to the president are mentioned only briefly in the paper’s main headlines, and the full story is buried deep within the daily’s 19th page.

Haaretz skimps on the incitement allegations and leads with a proposal by New Zealand to the UN Security Council outlining the terms ahead of a possible relaunch of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, even Haaretz prominently features an article on incitement, reporting that an IDF soldier was kicked out of the army’s prestigious Officers Training Course after expressing support for Rabin’s murder — a controversial opinion, to say the least.

It seems there is nothing that can stand on the way of the startup nation when it comes to record breaking technological advancements, and Yedioth reports on such a case in its ever-amusing back page. Well ok, admittedly, technological advance may not be the right term for the biggest tomato salad to have ever been tossed, but it is an impressive Israeli world record nonetheless. Yedioth reports that the humongoid salad, made by Israeli company Lycored during a so-called tomato happening in New York City’s Times Square, comprised 132 different varieties of tomatoes and weighed a total of 450 kilograms. Passersby were encouraged to taste from the multiple tomato products that were given out for free at the site, but surely anyone who tried to sneak a bite out of the salad would have been caught red-handed.