Woman denies aiming vegetable at Netanyahu
After brief detention, 18-year-old says she was trying to lob pepper at relative during market visit
A woman who was briefly detained after throwing a vegetable toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his tour of Tel Aviv’s Hatikva Market said Wednesday she had been trying to get the vegetable to her relative on the other side of the market and was not aiming at the premier.
“We all support Bibi and I did not mean to hurt him, I’m sorry for everything that happened,” the woman said.
She clarified that it was not a tomato that she threw, as originally reported, but rather a pepper.
The woman was arrested and questioned by police on Tuesday, then released later in the day, after investigators concluded her motive was not political.
The woman, identified only as an 18-year-old resident of Tel Aviv’s hardscrabble southern Hatikva neighborhood, did not hit the prime minister with the gently lobbed vegetable, as he was surrounded by a large number of police and security guards during a tour of the Hatikva Market with his wife, Sara, ahead of general elections next week.
She is known to authorities as suffering from a mental illness, according to multiple Hebrew-language media reports.
“She didn’t do it from any political motive. She doesn’t quite know who’s who on the political side,” a police source told the Walla news site after the woman’s release. “It’s clear to us she had no political opinion or motive.”
Video of the incident went viral on Israeli social media.
אישה העיפה עגבנייה מהדוכן לעבר נתניהו במהלך ביקורו היום בשוק התקווה @amit_segal pic.twitter.com/KjJp9jCHWA
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) April 2, 2019
Blue and White chief Benny Gantz condemned the incident, saying “Israel needs unity — not violence.”
But Netanyahu’s Likud claimed Blue and White helped spread the footage online.
“The 99.9 percent support for Prime Minister Netanyahu at Hatikva Market really bothered Benny Gantz, so he decided to put out the video clip to the media of the 0.1% and afterwards rushed to condemn” the tomato throwing, the party was quoted as saying by Hebrew media.
The woman had picked up the vegetable from a seller’s stall. It is not clear if she paid the shopkeeper for it.
Besides the incident, Netanyahu was largely well-received during his visit to the market, with party activists who arrived with the prime minister leading supporters in chants of “Bibi king of Israel,” using the prime minister’s nickname.
The incident came as Israel enters the home stretch of a heated election campaign for Knesset on April 9.
