‘Madness’ – Likud condemns ‘severed Netanyahu heads’ protest

Netanyahu’s Likud party slams violent protest imagery as “incitement to murder and behead” the prime minister.

By World Israel News Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against an anti-government protest that featured “severed heads” with his likeness, reposting a social media message from a right-wing group that condemned the violent imagery.

Pictures of the Saturday night protest circulating on social media showed a demonstrator laying on the ground, wrapped in bandages smeared with fake blood, surrounded by silicon severed heads bearing Netanyahu’s face. Some of the heads were wrapped in banners that read “guilty” and “danger.”

In a media statement, a Likud party spokesman called the protest “madness” and should be considered “incitement to murder the prime minister and behead him.”

The spokesman noted that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and outgoing Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Ronen Bar had yet to condemn the incident.

“This needs to be said in a clear voice. The severed heads, as well as the protests today, have nothing to do with the hostages. On the contrary, these are people who decided to sacrifice the hostages in an attempt to overthrow the government,” the Tikva Forum wrote in a post on X, which was published by Netanyahu’s Twitter account.

“In a civilized country, there would already be dozens of people arrested for inciting murder. It is unclear where the Shin Bet is when it comes to these clear and dangerous representations of murder,” the Forum continued, stressing that it expected the bad blood between Bar and Netanyahu not to “affect the Shin Bet’s positions on everything related to the prime minister’s security.”

At the same Saturday protest, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon claimed that Netanyahu is threatening the democratic nature of the Israeli state, and that civilians must act to oust him from power.

“Take to the streets, stop the country,” Ayalon said at the rally. “Non-violent civilian revolt is the civic duty of every citizen.”