Arab security guard who attacked Jewish lawmaker exposed as a Hamas supporter

The right-wing MK feels vindicated for drawing his weapon when Arab parking lot security guards cursed and threatened him Tuesday night.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

One of the Arab parking lot security guards who cursed and threatened MK Itamar Ben-Gvir Tuesday night, causing him to draw his gun, has been found to be a Hamas supporter.

Mohammed Shweiki wrote admiringly on social media in 2016 about a Palestinian terrorist who was killed at the time by security forces after throwing a Molotov cocktail.

“Allah have mercy on you, my dear. This was your wish and it came true with the help of Allah. You asked for heaven and Allah gave it to you,” he wrote under a picture of the Hamas extremist.

Ben-Gvir’s reaction was not long in coming.

“It turns out that those who threatened my life are not simply criminals but Hamas supporters,” he said. “I want to see all those who believed that thug now eat their hats.”

The right-wing MK had gotten into a heated confrontation with Shweiki and another guard Tuesday night at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds parking lot after they told him he couldn’t park his car in the spot he had chosen.  In a video clip of the incident, Ben-Gvir can be seen drawing his personal weapon at one point and showing it in his hand, then lowering it while saying repeatedly to the guards, “You’re threatening me.” For his part, the guard can be heard shouting back that they were the ones being threatened.

The right-wing MK clashed on air Thursday morning with the head of the Knesset Ethics Committee, MK Yorai Lahav-Hertzano over the episode. The Yesh Atid legislator castigated Ben-Gvir, saying, “This is a serious criminal incident that has to be investigated by the police. It’s insane, it can’t be that a member of Knesset draws a gun against two security guards. Ben-Gvir makes sure to stress that these were Arabs, [he] is a racist and a homophobe.”

Ben-Gvir shot back, “The guard told me, ‘I’ll murder you,’ ‘I’ll kill you.’ That wasn’t filmed because at the time we were busy protecting our lives. My blood is allowed [to be spilled]…. If it was someone else speaking to a different MK he would have been in jail a long time ago. I want an indictment filed against people who tell an MK that they’ll kill him. You weren’t there. If someone murders me, Yorai will be happy.”

Ben-Gvir also addressed the Knesset plenum on the subject, saying in part, “I would expect those in the coalition, whom we’ve heard from more than once when MK [Idit] Silman (Yamina) spoke about threats on her life – that they would condemn [now], that they’d say ‘Enough violence.’ In their case [I say] also, ‘Enough hypocrisy.’”

in an interview Wednesday with Israel Hayom, Ben-Gvir said that “not a week goes by without my receiving messages like ‘We’ll kill you,’ ‘We’ll kill your children.’”

He said that he met with the head of the Knesset guard detail and told him what had happened.

“And I asked how it could it be that I receive hundreds of threats, and Knesset members who get a quarter of a threat get a security attachment with a battalion of guards” while he does not, he said, without mentioning whether he was given an answer to his question.

Arab Israelisdeath threatsHamasItamar Ben-Gvir