Yitzhak Rabin Center said to nix event over Ben Gvir’s planned speech
Far-right police minister sought to address conference organized by his ministry but center pushed back, reportedly over his threats in the lead-up to PM’s assassination in 1995
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The Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv has refused to host a conference by the National Security Ministry because ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was due to speak, according to a Tuesday report.
Sources cited by the Haaretz newspaper said the library and research center informed the ministry that the event was being delayed to avoid violating laws against state-funded campaigning before the October 27 election, but that the real reason for the cancellation was to prevent a speech by Ben Gvir.
Ben Gvir gained notoriety as a teenage far-right activist when he was filmed bragging about having stolen the hood ornament from then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car, weeks before Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.
“Just like we got to this hood ornament, we can get to Rabin,” Ben Gvir said at the time.
On November 4, 1995, gunman Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin as he left a rally in Tel Aviv, held at what was subsequently renamed Rabin Square.
In a statement to Haaretz, the center said it is “a state statutory corporation operating under the Elections Law (Propaganda Methods) and the guidelines of the attorney general, which prohibit the use of public resources of a statutory corporation in a manner that could create a connotation of election propaganda or providing a political platform.”
The canceled event, which was scheduled for next week, was organized by the National Authority for Community Security, which sits under Ben Gvir’s ministry. Some 250 directors of programs against violence from across the country were set to participate.
Unnamed sources told Haaretz that Ben Gvir, who has been minister since 2023, has not attended the authority’s previous annual events but this year decided to make an address.
The center recently told the ministry that Ben Gvir must not be allowed to take part; otherwise, it would cancel the entire event, the sources said.
As a result, the chief of the National Authority for Community Security, retired judge Avital Chen, notified participants that the summit will be postponed until after the election next month. No new date for the event was reported.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara recently clashed with the Shas party’s spiritual leadership after she ruled that a state-funded memorial event for former Sephardic chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the party’s first spiritual leader, must be delayed until after the election. Her ruling drew harsh criticism from Yosef’s son Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who called for God to “finish her.”
Last week, Baharav-Miara proposed a compromise by saying the memorial can be held as planned ahead of the election, so long as it is a private event rather than a state-funded ceremony.
The Times of Israel Community.