Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday responded to questions from visitors to his Facebook page, and stated that Israel would continue to fight the Palestinian Arab incitement which is directly responsible for the latest wave of terrorism against Israelis.
Asked why inciting Arab MKs are permitted to continue to serve in the Knesset, Netanyahu replied, “First of all I want to make it clear: I respect all of Israel’s citizens, Jews and Arabs alike. I want to see the integration of Israel’s Arab citizens into Israel’s economy and the working world. At the same time, however, I will not accept a situation where MKs in Israel, whoever they are, will express support or sympathy for terrorists who seek to destroy Israel. So I am promoting legislation to suspend whoever behaves this way.”
Another question that Netanyahu was asked was how the State of Israel fights incitement on the internet and particularly on social networks.
“We arrest inciters on a weekly basis, remove inciting channels from the air, conduct activities on social networks (I will not go into details here). We are fighting and will continue to fight incitement,” he stressed.
The Prime Minister also addressed the security situation and the many questions about ways to improve it.
“We are in the midst of a wave of terror and we are employing all means to defeat it. The State of Israel has been fighting against repeated waves of terror since its inception. The current wave is fed by the encounter between extremist Islam and social networking,” said Netanyahu.
“In this struggle, we employ a variety of means, most of which are unprecedented: We close inciting media outlets and prosecute – every week – those who incite on the internet. We are increasing the presence of troops on the ground, we updated the rules of engagement, we’re destroying terrorists’ homes, just yesterday we introduced legislation aimed at punishing employers of illegal workers, we have allocated a budget to close the holes in the fence, we deny work permits to families of terrorists, we impose curfews and perform checks on the roads. These are just some of the things that I can discuss publicly,” the prime minister wrote.
He added, “We fully support the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Israel Police, and I also appreciate the steadfastness of the citizens of Israel who give the world an example of how to courageously stand against terrorism. That is the key – courage, determination and patience. Just as we defeated the previous waves of terror, we will overcome this wave as well.”
