Police officially closed an investigation into a left-wing activist who had brandished a guillotine cutout at an anti-Netanyahu demonstration in Tel Aviv back in December.
The demonstrator had ceased an uproar after the Makor Rishon newspaper shared a photo of the guillotine he was carrying on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, with many contending that it was an explicit call to violence. However, police said that there was no proof that the activist had intended for any harm to come to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
President Reuven Rivlin called the display "clear incitement, which crosses the boundaries of freedom of expression and protest," while Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) condemned the guillotine as "revolting".
Amit Brin, the demonstrator who carried the cutout, had denied that he wished bodily harm upon the premier after the picture of him went viral. "I am a pacifist and I oppose any kind of violence," wrote Brin on Facebook.
"I have never used violence and have no intention of doing so in the future, and I ask anyone who interpreted what I said or did as a call to violence to stop and not to do so. Whoever understood from my words or actions that I call him or her to be violent was misled."