The Shin Bet decided to boost security around Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s family on Tuesday after an envelope containing a death threat and a bullet was received at the Bennett family home in Ra’anana.
“Political conflict, no matter how profound, should not reach violence, bullying and death threats,” Bennett tweeted. “We need to do everything, as leaders and as citizens whose future and the future of their children are in this country, so that such phenomena simply do not happen.
We are all human beings,” adding that he is not only the prime minister but also a husband and father.
Bennett called for “calm and reconciliation,” especially on social media.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also emphasized the online incitement.
“We will continue to fight the discourse of hatred in the street, online, everywhere,” he stated. “They will not scare us. The extremists will not defeat the sane majority.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that “one bullet in an envelope can turn into three bullets fired from a pistol,” alluding to the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Bennett’s close political ally, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, described the threat as “shocking,” and compared it to the political atmosphere in ancient Israel, before the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jewish sovereignty.
Religious Zionism leader MK Bezalel Smotrich expressed his doubt that the threat was real, saying it may be a “spin intended to improve [the prime minister’s] public situation and delegitimize the Right and justified protests against Bennett.”
But he added that violence is unacceptable.
