Man arrested for threatening Israeli minister’s life, says ‘he’ll end up like Rabin’

An Ashkelon man threatened Kahana that he’ll “end up like Rabin,” a former prime minister who was assassinated by a right-wing extremist.

By World Israel News Staff

Police have arrested a man in his 50s for threatening Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana with death.

“Tell him to stop harming the Rabbinate or rabbis, I’m telling you, he will end up like Rabin,” the man said in a phone call to Kahana’s office on Wednesday.

Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995, at a peace rally in Tel Aviv by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.

“Someone will take him out because he’s harming rabbis and the Rabbinate,” the man, a resident of the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, threatened. “He just has a kippa on his head, he isn’t even religious.”

Kahana, an Orthodox Jew and a member of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s nationalist religious Yamina party, served in the IDF’s most elite combat unit. He has been leading a series of reforms concerning the laws of kashrut and conversion, which until now have been controlled by the ultra-Orthodox sector.

In November, Israel’s security agency, aka Shabak or Shin Bet, upgraded Kahana’s security due to threats on his life.

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