Netanyahu to police: Check death threats against myself and my family

Facebook poster called for police to “prepare to direct traffic for the funerals of Benjamin, Sarah and Yair Netanyahu.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the police Monday to immediately investigate death threats posted on social media against him and his family.

A Facebook user called “Tzvika Sabag” wrote a post saying, “Israel Police, prepare to direct traffic for the funerals of Benjamin, Sarah and Yair Netanyahu. Thank you.”

The biographical line under Sabag’s name says that he “has a deathly hatred” of the three “and all who collaborate with them.”

This was the second time in just a few days that Sabag talked of the death of the prime minister. In advance of the anniversary on Monday of the 1995 assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Sabag directly incited to murder, writing:  “If there is one conclusion I reached on the eve of the anniversary, it is that Bibi should get a bullet in the head!”

Sabag’s profile  shows a picture of the prime minister’s face with a large noose in front. The poster had been made as a homework exercise by a student in the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2016. She had been briefly questioned by police at the time for incitement and then released. Sabag had apparently found it online.

According to the student’s lawyer, she had asked her investigator whether she should remove the picture from the internet, but she was given permission to leave it there.

Netanyahu released a statement saying that he had turned to acting commissioner Motti Cohen to probe the incitement against him. The Lahav 433 cybercrime unit has officially opened an investigation.

Two years ago, during an anti-corruption rally aimed at Netanyahu, a protester waved a cardboard guillotine. The act was condemned by both right- and left-wing politicians as incitement that should be investigated by the police.