Democrats party distances itself from PR man who supported anti-Ohana posters

A spokesman for Yair Golan’s The Democrats distances the opposition party from a member of its public relations team after he appeared to endorse posters denigrating Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana (Likud) that were pasted along the path his children take to school.

One poster declared, “No forgiveness for the collaborator with the one who funded Hamas.” Another called him “A collaborator in the robbery and plunder,” apparently referring to criticism of state funds going to various narrow coalition causes.

Responding to Ohana’s X post condemning the incident, Amir Shperling tweeted “We’ve only just begun,” alongside a heart emoji.

A former writer for the satirical television show “Eretz Nehederet” (A Wonderful Country), Shperling joined The Democrats’ media team last December, with chairman Golan declaring that he was coming on board “to make a truly wonderful country here.”

רק התחלנו❤️

— אמיר שפרלינג (@ShperlingAmir) September 1, 2026

A spokesman for The Democrats tells The Times of Israel: “Amir wrote these things solely of his own initiative. They were not coordinated with us, nor do they reflect our views.”

Shperling writes in a followup tweet: “Anyone who thinks I am afraid of threats, getting fired, or any smear tweet, curses, etc., because of my response to Amir Ohana, one of the destroyers of this country… will find that they are mistaken. I answered Amir Ohana in response to his victim-playing tweet that ‘We’ve only just begun,’ and we really have only just begun. The person who destroyed the country should have thought about his children, not me.”

In his own tweet condemning the posters, Ohana had written that “there is no camp as violent, abhorrent and ugly in spirit as the camp capable of sullying my children’s first day of school in this way.”

Asked to clarify if he was referring to the entire opposition, a spokesman for Ohana simply sends a link to Shperling’s tweet and writes “this camp.”

In his own tweet, The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv condemns those involving Ohana’s children in politics but declares that the Likud lawmaker is “the last person who should preach morality,” because his rhetoric backs and “encourages crude violence.”

“I still remember approaching you at the podium and telling you that bereaved parents and families of hostages were being beaten in the hallways of the Knesset and thrown to the floor, and you just shrugged your shoulders,” Kariv declares.

Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz also condemns the posts, telling Ohana in a tweet that “it’s time for us Israelis to stop the divisive discourse that’s tearing us apart.”

“I’m sure that an overwhelming majority of opposition voters see this act as bullying and oppose it — just as an overwhelming majority among coalition voters oppose extremist acts. Our children deserve better.”

A recent poll by the Institute for National Security Studies found that 39% of Israelis ranked “violent conflict between groups” in Israel as one of the country’s leading threats, alongside a nuclear Iran.