JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s teenage son has received a death threat and a bullet in the mail, Israeli officials said Thursday, issuing a second such warning against the Israeli leader’s family this week.
The threats came at a time of deep political divisions in Israel. In a major speech on Wednesday evening to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, Bennett spoke out against polarization in Israel and urged citizens not to let internal divisions tear society apart.
Israel Police said both incidents were being investigated but gave few other details, including where the items were shipped and who may have shipped them.
Bennett has been the target of heavy criticism from Israel’s hard-line right wing since the formation of his ruling coalition last year. In 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish ultra-nationalist who opposed his peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Bennett’s government is made up of eight parties from across the political spectrum, including religious nationalists, centrists and an Islamic party. It is the first Arab party to be part of a governing coalition.
These parties have little in common other than their shared hostility towards former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They have agreed to put many of their differences aside while focusing on similarities such as the economy, managing the coronavirus crisis and spending on education and social services.
Netanyahu, now leader of the opposition, has worked hard to undermine the coalition.
Critics have accused Bennett, who heads a small religious nationalist party, of abandoning his uncompromising core beliefs. A member of his Yamina party was sanctioned as a “defector” this week for repeatedly backing the opposition by hundreds of votes. Another member of his party recently resigned from the coalition, leaving the fragile alliance without a parliamentary majority.
Bennett formed the coalition last June after four inconclusive elections that underscored the cracks in society on key issues and the divisive impact of Netanyahu’s 12-year rule.
In his speech on Wednesday, on one of the most solemn days of the year, Bennett implored the nation to put their differences aside.
“My brothers and sisters, we cannot, we simply cannot allow the same dangerous gene of factionalism to dissect Israel from within,” Bennett said.
That speech came a day after his family first received a bullet in the mail. The episode prompted his 17-year-old son, Yoni, to express his sorrow in an Instagram post.
“It’s just sad to see real people writing such horrible things,” he said. “To think he lives and breathes like me but has a brain created by the devil is insane.”
Bennett is a former top Netanyahu aide, and Yoni is named after Netanyahu’s older brother, who was killed in a famous Israeli commando attack in 1976 while rescuing a hijacked plane in Uganda.
An Israeli official familiar with the matter confirmed Thursday that the second threatening letter and bullet were sent to Yoni Bennett. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity, as required by regulations.
Police have put a gag order on their investigation, and officers have refused to say if there were any suspects.
While many references pointed to Jewish extremists, the threats also come at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians following a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities, Israeli military strikes in the occupied West Bank and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site and cross-border Fight with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.