Rivlin: Another political murder ‘possible,’ but I have no fear
In wake of death threats against him following condemnation of Duma attack, president says he will not be intimidated
President Reuven Rivlin said Friday that another political assassination in Israel — like the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 — was “possible,” but that he’s “really not afraid” of the intimidation threats he has received online following his sharp criticism of Israeli society and its perceived tolerance for Jewish extremism.
Rivlin has been especially outspoken after two hate-crime attacks towards the end of last week that saw 16-year-old Shira Banki stabbed to death at the Jerusalem Gay Price Parade last Thursday by an ultra-Orthodox man, and Palestinian toddler Ali Saad Dawabsha burned to death in the West Bank Friday morning when alleged Jewish terrorists firebombed his family home.
In condemning the attack of the Dawabsha family home in Duma and expressing shame that the suspected perpetrators are Jews, Rivlin raised the ire of right-wingers on social media who wished for his death and posted photos and videos casting him as a Nazi officer. The president spoke at an anti-violence rally in Jerusalem last Saturday, following the attacks, and warned that “flames of hatred” were consuming Israel and that Jewish extremists must be met head-on.
In a series of interviews in the Hebrew press Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of his presidency, Rivlin said that the online attacks “could be insulting and angering” and that he was facing some “difficult days” with the deluge of hate targeting him, but that “on a personal level, I am not someone who will cancel plans because of personal danger, because I’m really not afraid.”
Rivlin’s security team lodged a complaint with police over the death threats. An investigation was also launched over a series of videos showing Rivlin — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — in SS uniforms.
“We are in the middle of a great fracture,” Rivlin told Ynet Friday in reference to the tense public atmosphere following the spate of hate crimes. “Everything’s possible,” he added, when asked if he felt Israel could witness another political assassination.
“Today there are those who hallucinate that a democratic and Jewish state is only democratic for the Jews,” he warned.
“Terror is terror is terror, and it doesn’t matter what nationality that terror belongs to. There is a difficulty in combating the type of terror that is perpetrated by groups of radical Jews. It’s terror from within and it is difficult to bring these perpetrators to justice; we need to create tools in order to combat this style of terrorism,” added Rivlin.
“Within this country, we tolerate the targeting of our citizens — those who are not Jews, [those who are] Arabs, Christians or Muslims. This may lead us to a situation where we can lose everything. We need to deal with this situation where children are killed, or where we allow the blood of others to be spilled, or where you have people who say ‘my religious beliefs command of me to burn, shatter and destroy.’ We must deal with terrorism as terrorism, whether it’s Arab terror or Jewish terror,” Rivlin told Walla News.
The president also addressed Israel’s official opposition to the Iranian nuclear deal between the world powers and Tehran and the toll on the US-Israel relationship of the personal animosity between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.
“The deal with Iran is very grave from Israel’s perspective, but I wouldn’t refer to it in disastrous tones. We know how to defend ourselves. We don’t need Iran to have a nuclear weapon to threaten our existence. The 100,000 Iranian missiles pointed at us from Syria and Lebanon are a threat to us, and we take this into account,” he said, adding that the lifting of international sanctions would only strengthen Iran’s terror capabilities by allowing funds to flow into Iranian coffers to fund more operations and improve capabilities.
The president warned against Israel’s “increasing isolation” in the world on the Iran issue as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even in the US.
Regarding the ties between Netanyahu and Obama, Rivlin told Ynet he thinks “they have very similar personalities and they are able to frustrate each other.
“It’s not good that the frustration will come at a cost to US-Israeli relations,” added Rivlin.