A new video clip under the title "A Call for the Murder of Defense Minister Ehud Barak by Anarchists," circulated the internet Tuesday. The video contained an internet bot carrying the signature: "You are dead; your head is lodged on a stake."
Video producers explained at the end of the clip that their intention was to protest the recent incitement in Israeli society and that they were not actually calling for the murder of Defense Minister and Labor Party chair Ehud Barak. The video that was uploaded to YouTube has since been removed, and Barak’s office has refused to comment on the matter.
The crew that created the short video claims that they stand against the clip that was uploaded Monday calling for the death of attorney head of the Special Tasks Division of the State Attorney’s Office Shai Nitzan. Comments in the new video describe the clip’s producers as "a group of citizens from all ends of the political spectrum. We oppose violence in all forms.
Our aim in this video that we have published was to stir things up and we did not expect that such actions would be received so strongly. Perhaps there is room for comfort in this; our healthy sensitivities still find disgust in such negative incitement. Numbness in society is a plague that allows provocation, from all sides of the political map, to enter into illegitimate arenas."
The video’s producers added that "we are happy about the exposure that we have received, and we hope that this video and the next video will help to bring change to the public discourse in Israel, a dialogue that listens to the other, is more accepting, and has in it more love."
At the end of the video the producers wrote: "We are opposed to violence in all it’s various forms, and of course we are not calling for the death of Barak or Shai Nitzan. We apologize if someone was offended by our actions but we did not see another way to relate our message against incitement and violence that has penetrated the national discourse from all political persuasions. We hope that our message against provocation will help to change the public dialogue in Israel and will help to lower violence in society and focus more attention on listening to the other, however different he may be."
The previous video, and the one producers of the new clip say they are protesting, displays Hebrew words in red letters calling for Nitzan to be murdered and describing him as a traitor “who instead of protecting the Jewish people from Arabs… cooperates with Arabs against the Jewish people.”
The video ends with the slogan, “Kahane was right,” referring to the assassinated head of the outlawed Kach Party, Rabbi Meir Kahane. It was distributed by e-mail and sent on the letterhead of Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman.
Neeman issued a statement saying he “wanted to emphasize in the clearest possible way that no such message had been sent from the minister’s bureau.”
He added that the contents of the video “were extremely grave and we totally condemn them. The bureau has passed the information on to the Justice Ministry’s security branch, and a formal complaint was lodged with the police and other enforcement agencies.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on police to investigate the video and track down those who produced it, saying that “criticism is legitimate, but incitement and calls to murder,,, damage the values of democracy in the State of Israel and must be cut off.”
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