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Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Kfar Habad (Channel Two)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners February 14, 2005 |
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Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said Friday that he views harassment and violence towards elected officials and security personnel as a grave matter.
Mazuz also announced that in keeping with orders issued prior to the incident, police will be instructed to handle such matters quickly, forcefully, and to the full extent of the law, Haaretz reported.
Mazuz published his position a day after several anti-expulsion protesters in Kfar Habad heckled Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, according to the police, one of them slashed a tire of his armored car. [It turned out the tire was flat, not punctured. Police are launching an investigation as to how the air was removed from his tire.]
Netanyahu had to be rushed away from a wedding celebration in the Hassidic community east of Tel Aviv on Thursday night.
Netanyahu was not injured in the "attack" [which, it turned out, was staged by a reporter looking to "make news."]
Netanyahu has voted in parliament and Cabinet in favor of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from all Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of this year.
According to media reports, Netanyahu arrived at the wedding late Thursday and was verbally and physically attacked by two or three youths [reportedly paid or encouraged by the reporter].
Earlier in the week, Education Minister Limor Livnat was heckled by a group of extremists who oppose the pullout plan. Her bodyguards were recorded on violence initiating violence against the protesters.
The YESHA Settlement Council on Friday morning, believing the report that the finance minister was really assaulted, distanced itself from the actions.
"Violence and the use of force are not part of our way and we condemn it wholeheartedly," the council statement said.
The "up to three" youths involved, who were not residents of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad community where the wedding took place, approached the minister as he was leaving the event, and shouted slogans against the expulsion plan, including "You are a bunny! Jewish blood is not cheap," a reference to the government's apparent abandonment of Gaza residents in the face of Palestinian rocket and mortar barrages.
They also chanted that "it is forbidden to uproot Jews from their home, " Army Radio reported.
"The people who were there were not local residents. Anybody who knows the ways of Chabad and its basic values knows that this sort of thing could not be done by a Chabad Hasid," community spokesman Menachem Brod told Israel Radio.
Upon reaching his car, Netanyahu noticed one of its tires had no air and left the wedding in another vehicle.
Netanyahu said after the incident that "with all the understanding I have for these people's distress, there is no room for violence in the public debate."
Police detained the cameraman who filmed the wedding, because he did not initially turn in evidence that might identify the would-be assailants in the footage, Israel Radio reported.
"We believe that the heckling was carried out by up to three minors although nobody has been arrested yet," police spokesman Gil Kleiman told Reuters.
This was the second such incident this week. Education Minister Limor Livnat was accosted earlier inthe week by Kach supporters at a memorial for Yair Stern, commander of the pre-state underground movement Lehi, and had to be whisked away from the Tel Aviv cemetery by security personnel.
Sharon told Likud party members on Thursday of threats he had received and slogans saying that his late wife, Lili, was waiting for him to join her. He criticized them for not speaking out against the threats.
"I was shocked, but what has stunned me even more was that I did not see any minister or member of Knesset open their mouth on the matter," Sharon said.
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