Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg called on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to probe the Arutz Sheva news site, following the publication Monday morning of an opinion piece she claimed constituted incitement.
In her appeal to Mandelblit, Zandberg claimed that an opinion piece written by Itamar Segal on the Arutz Sheva Hebrew website regarding the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin constituted incitement, and must be removed.
The article entitled “Did Rabin Betray?” was published for the 23rd anniversary of the late premier’s assassination at the hands of Israeli law student Yigal Amir.
While Segal denounced political violence generally and Rabin’s assassination specifically, and explicitly argued that the late prime minister was not a traitor, Zandberg nevertheless claimed the article constituted incitement, noting that Segal argued that specific actions taken by Rabin could be considered treasonous.
“The title of the article is ‘Did Rabin Betray?’ – and the article itself is full of expressions of incitement to violence: ‘The Land of Israel was betrayed’, ‘the Oslo [Accord] was a crime’, and ‘the Olso [Accord] and its companions need to be buried’,” Zandberg wrote.
“Asking the question ‘Did Rabin Betray?’ justifies the murder of Rabin, and advances a narrative which includes the violence which preceded the murder, and of course incites to violence.”
Zandberg called on the Attorney General to order Arutz Sheva to remove the article, and to investigate Segal for possible charges of incitement to violence.