‘The era of killing Israelis because they are Jews is over,” new Home Front Minister Avi Dichter said Sunday, adding,  “For first time, Israel’s existence is threatened” by Iran’s nuclear bomb program.

Ditcher is replacing Matan Vilnai, who is Israel’s new ambassador to China. He defected from the crumbling Kadima party when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu nominated him to succeed Vilnai.

“I have dedicated my entire adult life to defending the Home Front, as a combat soldier, officer and Cabinet minister,” Dichter said at the ceremonial acceptance of the new position.

He said although the IDF has vastly improved its capabilities to defend the country, our enemies also have improved their capacity to attack Israel and have created a strategic threat against us from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, and there is the existential threat from Iran for the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel.
Dichter also declared, “The era of murdering Israelis simply because they are Jews has ended.

Using a familiar Hebrew phrase of  “respect and suspect,” Dichter stated,  The Arab Spring revolutions that have shocked the stability of the region obligate the Israeli leadership to carefully examine against whom we should have a policy of ‘respect and suspect’ and against whom our polices should  be ‘suspect and suspect.’”

He also punned the term “Richter Scale.”

“The first time I pledged my oath to the country was as a soldier at the Western Wall almost 43 years ago,” the new minister said. “The feeling of being on a mission was beating in my heart them, when I was dressed in the uniform of a paratrooper. The strength of my mission has been multiplies with the birth of three children. Now, with four grandchildren in our family, the feeling of my mission is 8 on the ‘Dichter’ scale.”