Jewish Home MK responds to incitement criticism

Jewish Home MK Ayelet Shaked is promising to “take back” allegations she made via Facebook Thursday that a fire at a Jewish cemetery was arson if an investigation proves she was in error.

In an interview on Army Radio, she says she has no problem apologizing if she was wrong, but that the incident was not the central point of her post, rather that media outlets and politicians focus too much on price tag crimes by Jewish nationalists on Arab property.

Shaked is defiant in a Facebook post Sunday as she turns the tables on those who accused her of incitement.

“Many are protesting in regarding my post on the burning of a Jewish cemetery,” she writes. “Some of them are even inciting, cursing and claiming that it never happened.”

She asserts that the director of the Tel Aviv burial society had told her there was a fire on the outskirts of the cemetery and that firefighters had suspected arson, but “but let’s wait for a police investigation,” she says.

On Thursday she castigated the media and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni for not treating the alleged incident as seriously as price tag crimes.

“Is Army Radio doing an piece on the burning of a Jewish cemetery right next to the station?”

“Is Tzipi Livni, who condemns every [instance] of graffiti, condemning the torching of a cemetery?”

Army Radio is responding by asserting that it didn’t report on it because police told the station that “it never happened,” and questioned why Shaked did not call out the many other news outlets that didn’t cover the alleged incident.