Tel Aviv Graffiti Calls for ‘Death to Bibi’

Police on Sunday were investigating graffiti that was scrawled on a sidewalk in Tel Aviv calling for the murder of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The graffiti read “death to Bibi,” using the nickname the media often uses to describe the prime minister. The graffiti was discovered by passersby on ritzy Rothschild Boulevard, and they alerted police of its presence.

Rothschild Boulevard has been the center of the recent protests against alleged corruption in Netanyahu’s administration, and while there was no evidence that the graffiti was scrawled by leftist protestors who had participated in those demonstrations, politicians on the right were quick to condemn the scrawling. In a social media post, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said that the graffiti was the “crossing of a red line, whether it was scrawled by someone who disagrees with the Prime Minister’s political, ideological, or other stance. We are nearing the point of no return. We must quickly catch the criminals who did this and punish them to the full extent of the law.”

In a separate post, Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein wrote that “here we see another condemnatory graffito, this time against the Prime Minister. When will we finally learn that incitement leads to violence? You are allowed to criticize, but you are not allowed to incite.”

Communications Minister Ayoub Kara said that “the incitement against the Prime Minister must stop, and immediately. Don’t say the writing wasn’t on the wall. We see it in the scrawling on the sidewalk, in the use of guillotines at the leftist demonstrations, the ‘artwork’ at the Betzalel Academy, and at other opportunities. Unfortunately there will always be people who will act on this incitement – and only then will we confess our sins.”

Kara was referring to a recent demonstration on Rothschild Boulevard in which a protestor displayed a guillotine, implying that Netanyahu should be beheaded. In a statement, the Likud said that the display of the guillotine “is incitement to murder Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which came along with protests and calls against Zionism. The leftist protest in central Tel Aviv crossed all the red lines.”