Knesset panel reprimands MK for calling to bulldoze Supreme Court

The Knesset Ethics Committee reprimanded Jewish Home MK Moti Yogev Wednesday over comments made months earlier in which he called for the Supreme Court to be razed by a bulldozer.

Yogev, from the Jewish Home party, was let off with a reprimand by the ethics committee, which noted it was his first offense, though it called his comments “blunt and outrageous.”

After the Supreme Court ruled in July of this year to demolish illegally built homes in the settlement of Beit El, Yogev stated that “we have to take the blade of a D-9 [bulldozer] to the High Court of Justice.”

Yogev was also criticized for comments against Supreme Court Justice Uzi Vogelman over his decision to freeze an order to demolish terrorists’ homes pending appeals.

Yogev had declared that Vogelman had “placed himself on the side of [Israel’s] enemies,” and said the injunction “defends the rights of murderers, thus preventing deterrent punitive measures and putting people’s lives at risk.”

Both sets of comments were met with condemnation from across the political spectrum, and several MKs filed complaints against Yogev to the ethics committee.

In response to the committee’s decision, Yogev stated that while he respected the panel and the court, he rejected the decision to reprimand him.

“It is inconceivable that an MK is unable to criticize the Supreme Court and its judges. Nothing that I said encouraged violence or incitement, neither in using the bulldozer metaphor or in my criticism against Justice Vogelman,” he said, according to news site Maariv.