The Israel Police were well aware of the threats on Yehuda Glick's life quite a while before he was shot, recordings prove.
Col. Avi Biton, Commander of the Jerusalem Police's David Precinct, said in a meeting with Glick two months ago that police are familiar with the threats against Glick's life.
The recordings were played by Galei Yisrael radio's Kalman Libeskind on Monday morning.
After a long period in which Glick was barred from the Temple Mount, he met Biton together with a friend, Yaakov Haneman.
When Glick's ban expired, he was allowed back on the Mount, where he began suffering regular attacks by a group of Muslim men who call themselves the Murabitoun, and who have a habit of confronting Jewish visitors to the Mount in an attempt to scare them off.
Col. Biton called the situation “unbearable” and turned to talk about Glick himself.
"Mr. Glick turns into a red rag (to a bull),” he explained. “I mean, the number of times you ascend, and again – I, personally, really do not care, you can ascend to the Temple Mount 80 times, but I want to create a balance, I see what the other side thinks, I see what the other side writes.
"OK, by the way, you have been warned here,” said Biton. “You've been warned to avoid getting hurt.We did, after all, have some intelligence information that someone wants to hurt you.
Glick replied: “I get this (threats) on Facebook every day.”
Biton: Fine, OK.
Glick: “It's as if they threaten my life daily.”
Biton's response was surprisingly blase: "Like everywhere in Israel," he said, referring to ongoing Arab violence elsewhere in the country.
Col. Biton then told Glick and Haneman that he met the Murabitoun several days earlier and that when asked "what bothers them" they told him: “It bothers us that Yehuda Glick goes up into the Mount 4-5 times a day. We see it as a provocation.”
Haneman warned Biton: “You want to maintain quiet on the Temple Mount, we understand this, but if you do not prevent the Arabs from continuing to ratchet up their violence against us, they could pull a knife at at some stage, do more serious things, reach a situation that you don't even want to arrive at.”
Tragically, that prediction proved all too accurate when Glick was shot and critically injured by an Islamist gunmen last week, as he emerged from a conference on Jewish rights on the Temple Mount.
The recording directly refutes claims by Israeli police chief Yohanan Danino that the force did not know of any specific threats against Glick's life prior to the shooting.
Following the shooting, Glick's father claimed his son had complained at least five times to police about death threats he had received - and that none of them were taken seriously.
Glick's wife accused police of "abandoning" the Temple Mount activist, noting that instead of protecting him police had opted to punish him for his continued peaceful campaign for Jewish prayer rights on Judaism's holiest site.
Meanwhile, Islamist groups continue to incite against Jewish activists who visit the Temple Mount. On Sunday, a graphic published online by Muslim extremists features 15 Temple Mount activists - including Glick, whose picture is the only one in black-and-white - along with an implicit threat against them.
