Man arrested on suspicion of threatening to murder Netanyahu

Police’s 433 cyber unit arrested a man on Thursday on suspicion of threatening to murder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the force said in a statement.

The suspect, a resident of Binyamina, allegedly made the threats in a group on the Telegram messaging app, police said.

According to Hebrew media reports, the suspect allegedly wrote in the group, “Where is the Shin Bet to arrest me? I’m saying it now, on Saturday night I’m murdering Bibi.”

He was arrested and taken in for questioning on Thursday, and the police said they would consider requesting to extend his remand.

A two-and-a-half-hour cabinet meeting on Sunday focused on incitement against Netanyahu after US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.

Drawing an equivalence between the threats against Trump and those against Netanyahu, the meeting opened with a video screened by Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs of compiled clips showing various people deriding Netanyahu as a “traitor,” “Satan,” and an “enemy of the people.”

The ministers in the meeting, including Netanyahu, blamed the incitement on the justice system, law enforcement, and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, accusing them of not doing enough to curb it.

Netanyahu himself has been repeatedly accused by the left over the years of encouraging incitement that led to the 1995 assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, or at least of contributing to the incendiary political climate that led to the murder. He has denied such claims.

His rivals also accuse him of regularly inciting hatred against the country’s center-left either directly or through his loyalists.