Ministers decry incitement after PM compared to Hitler, demand action from deputy AG
At fiery cabinet meeting, Likud’s David Amsalem says attorney general ‘should have been fired on the first day of the government, and if not then on the second’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Government ministers on Sunday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, complained bitterly about incitement against the premier and argued that Israel has not reacted “strongly enough” to the deaths of hostages at the hands of Hamas during the weekly cabinet meeting.
According to leaked remarks reported by Hebrew media outlets, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi railed against “incitement against the prime minister and the government,” slamming a since-deleted tweet by prominent government critic Ilan Shiloah, who compared Netanyahu and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to Adolf Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
“Hitler appointed Himmler to command the SS and the police and Himmler did the ‘work’ for the Nazi machine,” Shiloah tweeted, arguing that “similar processes” were at work in Israel today.
After Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon told ministers on Sunday that he was unaware of the tweet, Netanyahu expressed consternation, stating that “hundreds” of people had reached out to him about it.
Despite Limon’s contention that the post may not rise to the level of a criminal violation, both Ben Gvir and Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock insisted that double standards were being used, and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs ordered Limon to provide an update within a week regarding whether or not an investigation had been opened into the matter, the reports detailed.
Ben Gvir has previously been convicted for incitement to violence and supporting a terror group for distributing stickers that read “Expel the Arab enemy” and “Kahane was right.”
The discussion on Sunday came just over two months after Fuchs screened a compilation of video clips showing critics of the government engaging in “incitement against the prime minister” during a previous cabinet meeting held in the wake of an attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump.
In the short video aired by Fuchs, various people, including anti-government protesters, could be heard deriding Netanyahu as a “traitor,” “Satan” and an “enemy of the people.”
The screening was followed by a two-hour debate on the issue, during which ministers pointed fingers at the justice system, law enforcement and the attorney general for what they said was unchecked violent speech by members of the public against Netanyahu and his family.
Netanyahu himself protested in public remarks at that earlier meeting that “the senior officials” in law enforcement and the judicial system “don’t say a word. They don’t condemn [incitement]. What you have here is legitimization for an assault on democracy, and you have here the normalization of political murder.”
Ministers in Israel have been quick to compare incitement against Netanyahu to threats against Trump, claiming that the Israeli premier too could face an assassination attempt if the current level of discourse is left unchecked.
Ousting the attorney general
During Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Strock also asked why the government needed to listen to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s recent order to cut daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, inviting a fresh pile-on, transcripts showed.
“The attorney general and Gil Limon should have been fired on the first day of the government, and if not then on the second,” declared Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem.
“If it was Arabs or Bedouins and not Haredim, we know exactly what your position would be,” Ben Gvir told Limon. “When Arabs or Bedouins build illegal outposts in the Negev, they said that they must be connected to the water because there are children. If it’s Arab or Bedouin children, that’s fine and you come to their defense, but if it’s Haredi children, then no.”
The attorney general “wants to bring down the government,” chimed in Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur of Shas, who last month received a letter from Baharav-Miara instructing him to cut the subsidies because there was no longer a legal basis for the state to fund daycare for those who don’t enlist in the army.
Netanyahu’s government has frequently clashed with Baharav-Miara over issues ranging from the selection of a Supreme Court president to the enlistment of Haredi men in the military.
In recent months, ministers have repeatedly attacked the Attorney General’s Office and called for Baharav-Miara and Limon’s ouster. During one meeting in June, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli accused Baharav-Miara of supporting “institutionalized political violence” while Amsalem called Limon “the most dangerous man in the country.”
Arguing that firing Baharav-Miara would constitute a return to the government’s efforts to hobble the judiciary, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid this summer warned that “the opposition will not allow this to pass in silence or with polite protests from the sidelines” and “will not rule out any step or action, from mass strikes and an escalation of the struggle in the streets to a collective resignation from the Knesset.”
Sunday’s cabinet meeting also saw Ben Gvir and others press Netanyahu on the lack of a military response to the slaying of six Israeli hostages in Gaza, reports said.
“Ben Gvir is right. Every day that goes by and we don’t react means that we are coming to terms with the horror,” said Education Minister Yoav Kisch.
“There is a feeling that we are talking a lot and not reacting strongly enough,” added Chikli.
The bodies of six hostages abducted alive by Hamas on October 7 — Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino and Alex Lobanov — were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah earlier this month, shortly after they were murdered by their terrorist captors.
