MK back on Twitter after saying Palestinian teen deserved to be shot
After brief suspension from social network, Smotrich tweets thanks to site for spreading his message that soldier-slapping Ahed Tamimi is a ‘terrorist’
Michael Bachner is a news editor at The Times of Israel
Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich resumed posting on Twitter Tuesday, a day after the social media site suspended his account due to a post in which he said a Palestinian teen protester who was filmed slapping an IDF soldier should have been shot.
The firebrand lawmaker was banned for 12 hours late Monday for “offensive behavior,” along with a demand he remove the tweet, which expressed regret that Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year-old sentenced to eight months behind bars for slapping an Israeli soldier, had emerged unscathed.
“I stayed alive,” Smotrich tweeted shortly after his account was unfrozen.
He then thanked Twitter for “shutting his mouth” and bringing to Israelis’ attention his view that Tamimi “is a terrorist and not an innocent teenager.”
Smotrich also thanked his friends for supporting him and backing him up, and “my friends from the ‘enlightened and liberal’ left who revealed their true faces, which support full freedom of speech for everyone, provided that they think like them.”
Responding to a tweet from ex-Jewish Home MK Yinon Magal on Monday, Smotrich had lamented that IDF troops did not maim Tamimi during the December 2017 incident.
“I am actually very sad that she is under arrest, Yinon,” Smotrich tweeted at Magal, who had expressed satisfaction Tamimi was still behind bars four months after her arrest.
“In my opinion, she deserved a bullet, at the very least to the kneecap. That would put her under house arrest for the rest of her life,” Smotrich said.
The far-right Knesset member made it clear late Monday that he didn’t intend to delete the tweet, vowing to appeal against Twitter’s demand that he do so.
“This is a new record in silencing opinions,” Smotrich said. “Apparently freedom of speech is only reserved for one side of the political spectrum.
“I stand behind every word from this tweet,” he added.
According to a screen capture that Smotrich apparently sent right-wing colleagues, Twitter explained that he had violated the site’s rules banning “offensive behavior.”
“You are not permitted to be involved in deliberate harassment of a person, or to incite others to be involved in such behavior,” Twitter’s message said. “We view offensive behavior as an attempt to harass, scare or silence another person.”
Smotrich has a history of controversial remarks, including encouraging draft-dodging in protest of the IDF’s “radical feminist” agenda, comparing the evacuation of an illegal settlement outpost to a “brutal rape,” and claiming that “illiterate” Arabs are only granted university admission thanks to affirmative action.
He has also called himself a “proud homophobe,” called for segregated Jewish-Arab maternity wards in hospitals, and was involved in organizing an anti-gay “Beast Parade” in Jerusalem, in response to the city’s annual Gay Pride parade.
Tamimi is serving an eight-month prison term — the result of a plea deal — for slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers outside her West Bank home, as well as another video in which she encouraged stabbing attacks and other attacks against Israelis.
Under the terms of the deal, Tamimi confessed to aggravated assault of an IDF soldier, incitement to violence and disrupting soldiers on two other occasions. The 17-year-old was also filmed encouraging attacks against Israelis, including stabbing attacks.
In her version of the incident, Tamimi told a military court in the West Bank, the same soldiers featured in the video had shot her cousin in the head with a rubber bullet an hour prior to the filmed encounter.
Tamimi’s arrest and prosecution by Israel has garnered international attention. It has also touched on broader issues, such as the detention of Palestinian minors by Israeli — currently 356 — and the debate on what constitutes legitimate resistance to Israel’s rule over millions of Palestinians.
Earlier this month, the IDF said the Justice Ministry was investigating a video released by Tamimi’s family that shows an Israeli interrogator threatening the teen with the arrest of her relatives if she refused to cooperate. The interrogator, who at times moved within centimeters of the Tamimi’s face, also commented on the teen’s body, fair skin, and “eyes of an angel.”
Tamar Pileggi and Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
