Israel: Gantz decries election incitement after drive-by-shooting at party rally

Two Israelis have been injured in a drive-by-shooting at an election rally for opposition party Blue and White (Kahol Lavan), prompting party leader Benny Gantz to decry the atmosphere of incitement that has surrounded Israel’s upcoming general election.

Israel Police yesterday arrested two people on suspicion of firing rounds from a BB gun – which fires plastic bullets with significant force – into a Kahol Lavan rally in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv. Two party supporters were injured in the shooting.

Gantz has slammed the incident and stressed that “one cannot ignore the trend” represented by attacks on opposition supporters.

“We saw an event the other day in which our activist, who is also a relative of mine, was beaten. We hear about people who are using foul language. This is what the result of incitement looks like,” he explained.

He continued: “I call on the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] to come out and say that all violence, harsh language and any action that can create conflicts must be stopped immediately. We have a political debate but we belong to the same society and the same country.”

Blue and White number two, Yair Lapid, echoed Gantz’s sentiments, saying that “this shooting did not happen in a vacuum. The public atmosphere and incessant incitement ignited it. If we don’t get a hold of ourselves, next time it will end much worse.”

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Now that there is little over two weeks to go until Israel’s general election takes place on 17 September, campaigning has reached fever pitch.

With polls indicating that Israel could see a repeat of its April election result – in which Netanyahu’s Likud party and Gantz’s Blue and White were tied on seats, with neither the right-wing nor left-wing bloc having sufficient numbers to form a majority government – the prime minister has employed increasingly strong rhetoric against his opponents.

Likud’s campaign has repeatedly run attack ads against both Gantz and Lapid, portraying them as unfit to run the country by mocking their English language skills, editing videos to make them look deranged and labelling them with Netanyahu’s catch-call criticism “leftist”.

The party has also hit out at Netanyahu’s traditional foe, Palestinian citizens of Israel. On election day in 2015, Netanyahu’s now-notorious warning that “Arabs are coming to the polls in droves” was thought to be the phrase which synched his re-election, rallying right-wing voters by inciting against Israel’s some 1.8 million Palestinian citizens.

In April, the Likud party ran the slogan “it’s either Bibi or Tibi”, criticising head of the Arabic majority Ta’al party Ahmad Tibi. This rhetoric translated into real-world consequences in July when a Jewish-Israeli man was convicted of making death threats against Tibi on social media. In a Facebook post, the Israeli wrote that he would “be more than happy to put a bullet through [Tibi’s] head,” after which the veteran Knesset member (MK) filed a police complaint.

Speaking to MEMO after the ruling, Tibi said: “I think that the decision by the court is a step in the right direction, but there are still many instances of threats and racism towards Palestinians, especially towards leaders and even Jewish democratic leftist leaders and activists.”

“This behaviour towards Arabs and Arab MKs is spurred on by incitement from the government, mainly from Benjamin Netanyahu,” he concluded.

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