Man indicted for telling minister to ‘prepare herself for the grave’

A criminal indictment was filed Sunday against a 54-year-old Israeli man who threatened to kill Culture Minister Miri Regev in a series of social media comments.

The suspect, from the southern city of Dimona, was arrested on Thursday for posting “You are going to be murdered” and “Prepare yourself for the grave,” after Regev slammed a veteran TV host for boasting on live television that he groped a woman in an elevator over a decade ago and refusing to apologize.

Journalist Yaron London drew harsh criticism last week from Regev and others, with some calling for his firing, after he recalled how he touched a woman’s breast after she patted his stomach without permission.

“I was in an elevator in a high-rise building, and there was a woman who looked like she was a lawyer,” he told co-host Geula Even-Sa’ar. “We were alone in the elevator, and during the ride, she patted me on my [protruding] stomach and said: ‘London, what’s this?’ So I put my hand on her breast, and told her, ‘This also isn’t what it used to be.'”

During his telling of the story, London leaned over to pat Even-Sa’ar’s stomach to demonstrate the woman’s interaction with him. Even-Sa’ar called London’s behavior “shocking.”

Following the incident, Regev called for London to be removed from the popular show “Geula and London” on the Kan public broadcaster.

“It’s enough, Yaron London has to go,” she said. “You really don’t see the difference between patting someone’s stomach and touching a woman’s breast?”

She said that if London did not step down voluntarily, Kan should immediately suspend him to prevent him from “continuing to pollute public discourse in the media with taxpayers’ money.”

The Dimona man, whose name hasn’t been published, then wrote on Facebook: “God will put cancer in your head if you dare again to speak about Yaron London. It is time for you to go because you are going to be murdered soon. The next political murder will be you, prepare yourself for the grave. Everyone hates you,” according to a screenshot of the comments posted Sunday by Regev,

Regev thanked police for their swift reaction.

“My Facebook page is a completely open forum — anything can be written here, including harsh words. But not murder threats,” she wrote in a Facebook post accompanying the screenshot. “There is a limit, enough is enough!”

The Israel Police said in a statement that it “views with the utmost severity any threat against a public official aiming to prevent them from carrying out their public duty and to impinge on our democratic values. Police will take action to locate [the offenders] and distance them from the public sphere.”