An Israeli court Wednesday placed the brother of slain premier Yitzhak Rabin’s killer under house arrest on suspicion of incitement against President Reuven Rivlin in a Facebook post, police said. Hagai Amir was also involved in the Rabin assassination and served prison time for that.
Advertisement
“As long as I am president of the State of Israel, the murderer will not walk free”.
In the post, which was published on Tuesday, Amir wrote “Rivlin is a kiss-up politician”.
The post apparently was in response to Rivlin’s statement days earlier, at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination, that he would never pardon Yigal Amir. “He won’t decide whether or not my brother is released, only God can decide, just as God decided that Rabin would die – even though Rivlin and his friends didn’t agree”. He [God] ruled that Rivlin would be president, and the time has come for him [God] to rule that Rivlin together with the Zionist state must pass from the Earth, just as Sodom did, because of the crimes they committed legally against their own people. “This day is not far off”.
Protesting his arrest, Amir told the police officers who took him into custody at the Glilot Police Station that “this is terrorism against a citizen to shut him up and that’s an act that violates freedom of expression”.
As part of the barrage of hate against the president, hardline Jewish activists posted a picture of Rivlin in the traditional keffiyeh Arab headdress, with one Facebook user saying that the president was elected with the help of “Arab fasicists”. He was found guilty of conspiracy to murder Rabin, planning attacks against Palestinians, as well as various illegal weapon possession offences.
Advertisement
Hagai was released in 2012, after serving 16 years in prison.
