Lieberman to distribute offensive Charlie Hebdo issue for free

In a desperate attempt to overcome his party’s plight in opinion polls; Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman chose incitement against Arab citizens to boost his chances at the next general elections announcing yesterday that he had instructed Yisrael Beytenu party activists to buy thousands of copies of the latest issue of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and distribute them to the public free of charge.

Lieberman’s announcement came after Steimatsky, Israel’s largest bookshop, cancelled a planned gala sale following complaints by an Arab member of the Knesset who warned the move would stoke Muslim fury.

“Israel cannot become an ISIS state — we will not allow radical Islam to intimidate us, and turn the State of Israel into a state that capitulates to threats and compromises the freedom of expression,” Lieberman said in a statement.

Stiematsky said it imported 700 copies of the first edition of the magazine following the attack on its headquarters in Paris and that it planned to sell only two copies per person through its online website.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, consisting of Israeli-Arab parliamentarians and council leaders, condemned the planned sale as “provocative”. The committee called on Stiematsky to cancel their sale gala and sent letters to the Israeli president and prime minister urging them to prevent the sale.

Israeli-Arab MK and a member of the Islamic Movement, Massoud Ghanayem wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that a public sale would be a “serious, dangerous, and stupid step” of which “no-one can predict the consequences”.

“I hereby appeal to your sense of honour; please personally intervene to prevent Steimatzky from distributing the magazine and the damaging images of the Prophet Mohammed, lest the Israeli government and Steimatzky be responsible for every consequence,” Ghanayem wrote.