Outrage Over Ben Gvir Calling Arab MKs “Our Enemies” in Poster

By Yisrael Price

An campaign poster of Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir in Ramat Gan, Wednesday. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

YERUSHALAYIM – The mayor of Ramat Gan said on Wednesday that he will defer to the Central Elections Committee on how to respond to outrage over a billboard by far-right party Otzma Yehudit calling for the banishing of three members of the Joint List as “enemies.”

The billboard, overlooking the Ayalon highway, a major thoroughfare passing by Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, shows the faces of party chairman Ayman Odeh and MKs Ahmad Tibi and Ofer Cassif, above the words “yehi ratzon, she’yistalku oy’venu,” “remove our enemies,” copied from the prayers of Lail Rosh Hashana. It is followed by a declaration that “the time of Ben Gvir.”

Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama-Hacohen told Army Radio that although the poster is “unpleasant,” it is up to the Central Elections Committee to decide if it must be removed.

Shama-Hacohen said that Tibi had complained to him that the poster is a call to harm Arab Israelis.

However, the mayor noted that so far no petition has been filed with the CEC against the poster. “It serves all sides,” Shama-Hacohen said, referring to the outcry over the poster.

He said that if it were up to him, he would probably have the MKs’ faces removed from the poster, and that he had already suggested it to Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of Otzma Yehudit.

Cassif said it was a call for murder.

Ben Gvir responded to Cassif, saying the banner calls for “expelling from the country those who support and act to harm IDF soldiers — and you and your friends Tibi and Odeh, supporters of terror, exactly fit that description.”

Ben Gvir said he would not remove the poster and told Cassif “your place is in the Syrian parliament and not the Israeli parliament.”

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