Liberman sympathizers threaten website exposing his ‘anti-Semitic’ Russian-language campaign

The group running the “Danger from our Home” website is also being physically threatened by party sympathizers.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Avigdor Liberman’s Israel Beiteinu party has filed a police complaint against a group of Russian immigrants opposed to the party’s anti-religious line, Israel Hayom reported on Tuesday.

The party charged that the “Danger from our Home” website “serves as a basis for spreading false and anonymous propaganda against Israel Beiteinu, including through bots.”

It specifically named website founder Natalia Rothenberg in its complaint. According to the news1 website, the party told police that a professional cyber company discovered that she was an agent for a company based in St. Petersburg that is operating a “fleet of bots” to defame the Russian-immigrant-dominated party.

The report said that Israel Beiteinu was charging her with receiving funding for the website from anonymous sources in contravention of Israeli law.

The Danger from our Home site translates Russian campaign material into Hebrew to expose to the Israeli public the hate-filled rhetoric party supporters use regarding the ultra-Orthodox population, which Liberman has attacked in the last year in an effort to gain more mandates in the Knesset.

According to Rothenberg, all those who work for the site are volunteers who are opposed to the divisiveness this kind of language is bringing to the Jewish state, and are afraid of the possible violence that could be directed at religious citizens as a result of it.

“We began to act because we felt that Liberman was hurting our life’s work,” the former Soviet refusenik told Israel Hayom.

“We came to a Jewish state that is supposed to be a Garden of Eden, without anti-Semitism. We were horrified when we saw what he’s doing on the Russian street, and who he is leading – boors who don’t know Hebrew and write nonsense about Judaism.”

The group has also been suffering threats ever since they translated and spread in social media a video made a few months ago by an Israel Beiteinu activist that gave false information regarding the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle.

“We get threats all the time,” she said, adding, “we know who these people are.”

Russian-language media also incite against her group, she says.

“They don’t write anything about our activity. They say it’s not anti-Semitism, just anti-hareidi. This website is so threatening to Liberman, it’s unbelievable.”

The group is planning a conference on Thursday called “No to hate, Yes to unity.” One of the organizers told the Hebrew daily that one person reacted to his posting an ad for it on Facebook by threatening to wipe out whoever comes.

Israel BeiteinuMarch 2020 elections