Middle East
Israel
Threats Against Barak
Prime Minister Ehud Barak is living under a constant threat of assassination. This comes against a backdrop of domestic discord and intense political maneuvering culminating in a June 7 Knesset vote to dissolve the government, tension with the Palestinians over delays in the peace process, and a heightened air of volatility in the region—following the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon, and the death of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.
The Israeli press has been closely chronicling the escalating war of words, drawing clear parallels with the political climate five years ago, just before the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the hand of a right-wing Jewish extremist.
The threatening rhetoric against Barak intensified in mid-May, when the Knesset approved the handover of Abu Dis—a West Bank town that borders Jerusalem—to the Palestinian Authority.
In a May 17 op-ed in Tel Aviv’s centrist Yediot Aharonot, Yossi Dahan wrote: “The politics of hatred has returned. The opening salvo was fired by [conservative Likud party leader] Ariel Sharon in his speech before the Knesset last week: ‘It is the first time since the Six-Day War that a foreign authority reaches the gates of Jerusalem and surrounds her, and this time it is brought there on a red carpet that is rolled out by a Jewish government in Jerusalem.’ ”
On May 30, Yediot reported that two days earlier, Shimon Riklin, head of “The Next Generation of Yesha” [Hebrew contraction for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza], told a meeting of settlers and Labor Party activists at the settlement of Pasgot, “If Barak orders the clearing of settlements—he will be murdered.”
Riklin added that while he condemns all assassination attempts against the prime minister, dismantling the settlements would be interpreted as civil war.
According to an article in Yediot (May 31), “Settlers demonstrated at the home of Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami [chief Israeli negotiator with the Palestinian Authority in Stockholm]. They shouted ‘destruction upon your house’ ” [an allusion to a biblical curse wishing death upon an enemy—WPR].
Tel Aviv’s centrist Ma’ariv (June 4) quoted an article by Daniel Shilo—the rabbi of the Kadumim settlement—that was published in a settler newspaper: “It is a betrayal of Torah [biblical] and national tradition to hand over Jewish land. The criminal who does this is the same criminal who allowed the Holocaust to happen.”
A second Ma’ariv article that day said: “The [Israeli] security services have a great deal of information indicating that extremist elements are working on a way to attack the prime minister. Each time the negotiations [with the Palestinians] advance, so do the threats against [his] life, and when there is a halt in the negotiations, the threats against [him] decrease.’ ”
Writing the same day in Tel Aviv’s liberal Ha’aretz, Yossi Melman reported: “The Shin Bet security service has decided to tighten security around Barak and government ministers and to increase intelligence operations.” Barak’s response was carried in Yediot Aharonot on June 5: “Historical movements were not stopped by assassinations.”
On June 6, Yossi Levy reported in Ma’ariv that Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, while calling on rabbis and right-wing politicians to measure their words before making comments labeling the prime minister a traitor or urging for “cleaning him up,” had asked rhetorically: “Does [Barak] really need cleaning? Traitor, what do they do to traitors?”
On June 7, Kol Israel Radio reported—immediately after the passage of the preliminary reading of the law to dissolve the Knesset— that protesters near Barak’s home waved signs reading, “You have no mandate.”
In an interview broadcast on Israel Broadcasting Authority’s Channel 1, Barak responded by reminding the protesters and the rest of the country that he had won his mandate in a landslide election victory.
Ha’aretz reported that at a June 11 protest outside the prime minister’s home, the Yesha Council leadership— paraphrasing an anti-Nazi poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller— compared the Barak government to Adolf Hitler’s regime.
