President urges Israelis to tamp down rhetoric, warns against political violence
‘Something terrible is happening here,’ Herzog says in Jerusalem, lamenting cries of ‘treason’ in all directions
President Isaac Herzog urged Israelis on Sunday to temper inflammatory rhetoric and accusations of treason between political opponents, warning that verbal abuse can lead to physical violence if left unchecked.
“In recent weeks, I have been horrified again and again by words of the most awful type — saturated with hate, saturated with violence,” he said, delivering remarks at a celebration of Hebrew Book Week at the President’s Residence.
On Sunday evening, video circulated of Ayala Metzger, the daughter-in-law of Yoram Metzger, a hostage killed in captivity in Gaza, telling a crowd that if the remaining hostages do not return, “we’ll be waiting [for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] with a noose.”
Earlier in the day, police launched an internal probe into an officer who was filmed telling a detained protester in Jerusalem, “I’ll rape your mother” and calling him a “son of a bitch.”
In his remarks on Sunday, the president said, “When groups incite and accuse each other of trying to undermine and destroy the country, it is clear to all of us that something terrible is happening here — something that begins with verbal violence, but that I suspect really won’t end there.”
He decried violent statements “against families of hostages and bereaved families, against the chief and commanders of the IDF and the security agencies, against women and members of the media, against the judiciary and judges, against ministers and Knesset members and against the incumbent prime minister” — which, he said, have become “commonplace.”
The president cited a viral post on X in which a teacher from Herzliya called Iris Haim, the mother of Yotam Haim, a hostage who was mistakenly killed by the IDF in Gaza, “insufferable.”
Iris Haim has become a national figure since her son’s death, after she recorded a message to the soldiers who killed her son telling them she did not hold them responsible.
“Have we learned nothing from our history?” Herzog asked, seemingly alluding to the political environment in Israel in the months before a religious extremist assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Herzog lamented: “The very fact that I have to speak about this, when we are in the middle of a war…” adding, “We must not forget that our bitter and cruel enemies celebrate when they hear and see violence and hatred among us.”
Anti-government protests have ramped up in recent weeks, including major rallies in cities across Israel blaming Netanyahu for the continued war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, and for the failure to return the 116 hostages still in captivity— dozens of whom have been confirmed dead.
At the same time, ultra-Orthodox men have been holding mass demonstrations against their conscription to the military, after the Supreme Court effectively abolished an exemption that has long been afforded to full-time yeshiva students.
The effort to maintain that exemption incensed many secular and religious Zionist Israelis, who typically do serve in the military, as soldiers continue to be killed in the ongoing war.
There have also been inflammatory statements from members of the right toward the political center and the military and security establishment: Earlier this month, Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, suggested that the High Court of Justice was trying to hide “treason” when it shut down a probe by the state comptroller of the failures leading up to Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Separately, video circulated by the younger Netanyahu in April showed an IDF reservist declaring his allegiance to the prime minister and threatening not to obey orders from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
