Netanyahu demands crackdown on incitement in wake of Trump attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week ordered the country’s law enforcement to crack down on anti-right-wing incitement in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

“We are witnessing a flood of explicit threats of murder and violence against the prime minister and members of his family, and against ministers and public officials,” he said on Sunday in remarks opening the weekly Cabinet meeting. “These are not just flagrant criminal offences, they constitute a direct and explicit threat to democracy. But basically, apart from a few small exceptions, nothing tangible has been done.”

Netanyahu’s pretext was the assassination attempt at a campaign event in Pennsylvania over the weekend against Trump. The motive of the gunman, who was slain, is not known but Netanyahu said he saw it as part of a worldwide rise of political violence.

“The incident that occurred in the U.S., many said the writing was on the wall,” he said. He then drew a line between the attack on Trump and protests that have dogged Netanyahu for the last year and a half. “We are seeing the writing on the wall. We are seeing the writing in the squares. We are seeing the writing on social media.”

Netanyahu singled out for criticism Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, with whom he has clashed over separate criminal charges against him. “This is your job,” he said of prosecuting alleged inciters.

At the meeting, Netanyahu screened 90 seconds of protest leaders speaking at the rallies that have dogged him since his return to office in December 2022. Protests at first targeted Netanyahu’s proposed reforms of the judiciary and then, after Hamas’ deadly invasion on Oct.7, turned to his failure to prevent the attack and so far to secure the release of the hostages taken captive by Hamas.

Some speakers in the video said they wished for Netanyahu’s execution while others engaged in rhetoric typical of Israel’s political ferment, including accusing Netanyahu as being as damaging to Israel as its enemies — a gambit that Netanyahu has deployed for decades, including in the most recent election.

Without providing evidence, Netanyahu said threats in Israel are overwhelmingly against the right, although leaders from the left and centre also routinely face threatening rhetoric, and the most prominent assassination in Israeli history was of a left-wing leader, Yitzhak Rabin, by a right-wing gunman. Netanyahu has for decades bristled at criticism that he did not sufficiently condemn incitement against Rabin, then his rival, before the assassination in 1995.

“Each time the subject changes but it is directed against the right,” he said on Sunday, chiding the opposition for not condemning the alleged incitement. “But the senior figures do not open their mouths; neither do they condemn.”

Amos Harel, a senior security analyst for the left-wing newspaper Haaretz, accused Netanyahu of using the attempted assassination of Trump for political gain, saying “Netanyahu is one of the most protected head of states in the world.”