The far leftist MK should also be fined heftily for calling Sgt. Maj. Shuvael Ben-Natan a “criminal” and a “monster,” says Zionist group Betzalmo.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
An Israeli human rights group called Sunday for far-left MK Ofer Cassif to be suspended from the Knesset and fined a hefty sum for slandering an IDF soldier who recently fell in battle in Lebanon.
Betzalmo head Shai Glick wrote an urgent letter to the Knesset Ethics Committee after Cassif, the only Jewish member of the Hadash-Taal party, went online to brand Sgt. Maj. Shuvael Ben-Natan as a “criminal” and “monster.”
“The time has come to put an end to incitement and slander against IDF soldiers,” Glick wrote. “This is a serious blow to the honor of the fallen, his family and the IDF’s heritage. It is inconceivable that a Knesset member will call a fallen soldier a ‘monster’ and spread inciting and false claims about him.”
Glick demanded that the MK be suspended immediately and levied the maximum fine possible, 100,000 shekels (approximately $27,000), to send a message that such statements were unacceptable.
Cassif had charged that “At the funeral of a settler killed in Lebanon as a reserve soldier, his eulogizers praised him for murdering a 40-year-old Palestinian who was harvesting olives on his land, for seeking blood revenge and seeking to murder as many women and children as possible in Gaza, and for burning down a house there just for the fun of it.”
“Despite his criminal views and actions,” the MK continued, “he was drafted and sent to Gaza and Lebanon where he was able to carry out his sickening ideas. Monsters like him are now sitting in the government and setting policies. It is not the security of Israel and its citizens that motivates them, but a disturbed and bloodthirsty messianism.”
Ben-Natan’s brother had noted in his eulogy that the soldier had wanted to avenge the massacre Hamas had perpetrated on October 7, against “everyone you saw,” while a fellow soldier described the 22-year-old as “the biggest goofball in the platoon” who had set fire to a home against orders “to boost morale.”
Some 11 months ago, when Ben-Natan was on leave from the army, he went walking with his family near their Samarian home in Rehalim. A group of Palestinians surrounded them and began stoning them. Feeling their lives were in danger, he shot one of them, killing him.
When army forces came, they arrested him but none of the Arabs, threw him in jail for two weeks, and he had to battle the authorities to allow him to return to his unit to fight in Gaza, and eventually, in Lebanon.
On the way to eulogize Ben-Natan at his funeral last week, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan said that he had been told that the case against Ben-Natan had finally been closed as the allegations against him were proven false, but as the soldier was still at the front he never found out that his name had been cleared.
Glick told World Israel News that this was far from the first time Cassif had blackened the name of the IDF, and it was time he was punished for doing so.
“From the beginning, after the horrific massacre, Ofer Cassif has been working day and night on only one thing – to slander and harm the State of Israel and the IDF,” Glick said. “He petitioned against Israel in The Hague [joining South Africa’s spurious charge that the IDF was committing genocide in Gaza], calls for the imposition of an arms embargo on Israel ,and repeatedly defames the soldiers of the IDF, the security forces and the members of the emergency response squads, calling them murderers and war criminals.”
“Yesterday he went even further and called a fallen soldier (!) a killer and a monster,” he added. “This man belongs in prison a long time ago. But until then, the ethics committee has a clear obligation to kick him out of the Knesset and give him the highest fine.”
After Cassif had supported South Africa’s lawsuit, 84 MKs voted to expel him from the legislature in February but this was six short of the 90 necessary and he remained in his position.
Ben-Natan was killed along with three other members of his reserve Carmeli Brigade on Wednesday, after Hezbollah terrorists jumped out from a tunnel in a southern Lebanon village and threw grenades at the soldiers.