Ynet, the web site of daily newspaper Yediot Achronot, has fired one of its English-language editors for posting a Photoshopped image of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wearing an SS uniform on social media.
The image was posted last Wednesday, and Netanyahu immediately filed a police complaint. According to sources at Ynet, the editor, Gilad Halpern, was already called on the carpet by his bosses on Thursday, and over the weekend given his walking papers.
In a post on his Facebook page, Netanyahu railed against Ynet for failing to condemn the action. "It's interesting that the media in Israel, which always appears to be 'shocked' by incitement against Israeli leaders, chose to downplay the incitement against me in this post," the Prime Minister wrote.
Netanyahu also slammed Channel Two news commentator Amnon Abramovich, who also failed to say anything about the image, despite his having railed loudly against a recent post that portrayed President Reuven Rivlin in a similar outfit. “He was right to cry out about that post, but he could not spare a single word to talk about what Gilad Halpern did. What would have happened had it been a picture of a different leader? We already know the answer,” he added.
According to sources close to Netanyahu, the post, which has since been removed, was placed by Halpern as a cynical commentary over the brouhaha that broke out last week, when Netanyahu said that the Mufti of Jerusalem during the Holocaust era, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was a key figure in the Nazi decision to gas and burn European Jewry.
In a statement, Ynet said that although Halpern had posted the image to his personal Facebook page, the site took the incident “very seriously.”