Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu embraced the brother of a terror victim Wednesday, after the latter heckled him during his Memorial Day speech on Har Herzl.
Rahamim Cohen was wounded in a terror attack in 2000, when he was run over and stabbed 11 times by an Arab taxi driver. His brother is security guard Tzvika Cohen, who remains in a coma after being critically injured in an horrifically brutal Arab ax attack in Ma’ale Adumim to the east of Jerusalem in February.
Connecting the two tragedies, Rahamim Cohen shouted to Netanyahu before the latter could begin his speech, and prevented him from starting for a long minute.
“We do not wave a flag of hostilities,” Netanyahu stated during his address. “We believe in brotherhood, reaching out for peace, to the nations of the world and to our neighbors, in accordance with the passage ‘Nation shall not lift sword against nation,'” he continued, quoting the prophet Isaiah. “Who wrote that if not our prophet?”
Later during his speech, Netanyahu noted on Cohen’s words and said, “I understand you, I am a member of the same family.”
Cohen’s criticism and talk of forgiveness likely refers to Netanyahu’s recent decisions to return the bodies of terrorists, even after his conditions of returning the bodies were grossly breached.
Afterwards, however, Netanyahu embraced Cohen, apparently putting the interruption behind him.