March 20, 2006
Baruch Marzel: IDF must assassinate left-wing activist Uri Avnery
By N adav S hragai, Haaretz Correspondent
National Jewish Front leader Baruch Marzel, now campaigning for the March 28 Knesset election, said
Monday the leaders of the Kadima party are “traitors” and “criminals” and called on the Israel Defense
Forces to assassinate the far-left leader of the Gush Shalom movement Uri Avnery.
In response to comments by Avnery (see below FMR) calling the 2001 assassination of cabinet
minister Rehavam Ze’evi a Palestinian “targeted killing” – a term generally reserved for IDF strikes on
terror leaders – Marzel said the IDF needs to target Avnery.
Marzel also said, “Traitors sit in Kadima. They betrayed their own principles, Judaism and Zionism.”
On Monday evening, Peace Now called on Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to examine Marzel’s
statements for suspected illegal incitement.
“Marzel forgot that he receives immunity only if and when he is voted into the Knesset – not before.
Marzel is doing everything he can to make headlines and to shock people,” Peace Now said.
In addition to attacking his political opponents, Marzel also launched an offensive against Israel’s legal
system and system of rule.
“Israel is ruled by the junta. In the army, in the courts and in government there joint thinking, joint
voting and joint decision making,” Marzel said. He said the state prosecution and the High Court of
Justice make decisions that cause “Jewish bloodshed.” He also said that “if polling stations were
placed in the Supreme Court, it is reasonable to assume that a coalition of MK Ahmed Tibi and Meretz
would win.”
The far-right extremist also expressed anger at attacks by National Union and the National Religious
Party that he said increase the chances he won’t obtain the minimum number of votes to allow him to
enter the Knesset.
Marzel maintained Tuesday that polls conducted on behalf of his party indicate the National Jewish
Front would secure five seats in the coming election. Non-partisan polls predict Marzel’s party won’t
receive any seats.
Avneri likens Ze’evi death to IDF killings;’Yassin outranked Ze’evi’
By Haaretz Service
Attacking the IDF siege of the Jericho prison as a campaign ploy by Acting Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, leftist activist and ex-MK Uri Avneri Tuesday termed the 2001 assassination of
cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi a targeted killing, and said that slain Hamas founder Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin “was certainly of a higher rank” than Ze’evi.
“This was an almost-uncamouflaged campaign ploy by Olmert, prepared in a cabal with the
British and the Americans,” Avneri said of the IDF operation, in which a nine-hour siege
ended with the surrender of Ze’evi’s killers.
Avneri spoke as far-left activists demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the IDF raid, calling it a
flagrant violation of agreements under which Ahmed Sa’adat, head of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, and five other Palestinian militants were held under the auspices
of American and British monitors.
The monitors left the prison early Tuesday, in the wake of a statement last week by
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that the six would be freed.
The IDF surrounded the building soon after the monitors left.
Israel believes Sa’adat ordered and masterminded the Ze’evi killing.
Avneri, in remarks broadcast on Israel Radio, drew a direct parallel between Ze’evi’s 2001
death and Israel’s program of assassinating leaders of armed Palestinian groups.
“There are hundreds of people among us who carried out ‘focused preventions’
[assassinations], which included the murders of passers-by,” Avneri said.
“The killing of cabinet minister Ze’evi was a focused prevention in the true meaning of the
term. Those who extol focused preventions cannot say that when we do it to others it’s great,
it’s a national act, but when others to it to us, it’s a horrible crime.”
Asked by a reporter if he stood by his description of the killing of an Israeli cabinet minister in
a Jerusalem hotel as a focused prevention, Avneri replied, “We have killed dozens of people
of the stature of cabinet ministers on the other side.
Avneri, referring to the 2004 assassination of the Hamas leader, as well as to Ze’evi’s
“transfer” plan, said that “Sheikh Yassin was certainly of a higher rank than Rehavam Ze’evi.
Rehavam Ze?evi openly advocated the expulsion of all the Arabs from the country, and I
don’t see a difference in principle between this and the killing of the leaders of all the
Palestinian factions.”
European Jews for a Just Peace is a federation of Jewish Peace groups working and campaigning in 10 European countries