Lawmaker: ‘Political murder’ of Netanyahu resembles Rabin assassination

Likud Member of Knesset Miki Zohar compares the “political murder” of Netanyahu to the incitement that led to the shooting death of Rabin in 1995.

By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

In an interview Monday with Radio Haifa, Chairman of the Knesset House Committee MK Miki Zohar said that he sees the incitement against the prime minister today as being “just as severe” as it was in 1995 before the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Zohar, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, was being interviewed in light of the police recommendations to indict the Israeli leader. The Likud MK pulled no punches in Netanyahu’s defense.

“Yes, I’m comparing Rabin’s murder to what is being done to the prime minister,” Zohar told the station, “because what is being done to him is everything but taking his life.”

Zohar said the police investigators were “not objective” and “unprofessional” in their work. He also floated a conspiracy theory according to which the former head of investigations, Yoav Segelovich, who recently joined Yesh Atid, plotted with that party’s leader, Yair Lapid, to influence his former colleagues as a way to get rid of Netanyahu.

“What did they do with Rabin?” he asked rhetorically. “A detestable murderer came and took the prime minister out of his job by undemocratic means, by taking his life. Other than taking his life, they’re doing everything to Netanyahu so they can remove him from his job. And therefore, it’s not any better.”

In the interview, Zohar continued to criticize the police, saying that “whenever there is an investigation on the public level against elected officials or famous people,” the police “goes out of its way” to bring some kind of charge, “at any price.”

When the interviewer told him she was astonished by his comments, Zohar responded that he would not be surprised if he, too, will be called for an investigation, but he will not be intimidated. “I say what I believe and what the public believes,” he asserted.