Dichter Outraged Over Slap on Wrist for MK Who Called Him ‘Murderer’

Former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter gave the Knesset Ethics Committee a taste of his own moral rebuke after the committee merely reprimanded MK Ayman Odeh, who had called Dichter a “murderer” for ordering the assassinations of arch terrorists.

Odeh used the epithet in a recent discussion regarding the bill to allow the Knesset to remove members with a majority of 90 votes, aimed at Arab MKs who support terrorists. He “sent people who killed [former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser] Arafat, as well as [senior Hamas leaders] Ahmed Yassin and Rantissi, and he is in the Knesset. He sent people to murder other people,” Odeh said.

The Ethics Committee explained that considering Odeh has no previous disciplinary infractions, it would not impose a heavier punishment on him.

Dichter, currently a Likud MK, railed at the ruling: “The Ethics Committee’s decision to reprimand Odeh is a decision of a body with no courage. The choice of an ‘educational reprimand’ to an MK who slandered the state on false charges and permits…public servants like myself and others [to be defamed], proves that the Ethics Committee failed in its role as the guardian of the honor of members of the Knesset.”