Yariv Oppenheimer, chairman of ultra-leftist group Peace Now, signed a police complaint Sunday alleging threats against his life by followers of nationalist activist Baruch Marzel.
On his Facebook page, Oppenheimer wrote that he is “exiting the police station now, worried and pessimistic. The telephone won’t stop ringing and on the other end, human scum who follow Marzel continue to curse and threaten.”
He said that he had been experiencing “an ugly afternoon that only shows how twisted the IDF decision was, to allow Marzel and his friends to host soldiers for meals at their homes.”
Oppenheimer wrote a letter to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier Sunday and asked him to forbid IDF soldiers to eat at Marzel’s home in Hevron.
“Recently,” wrote Oppenheimer in the letter to Yaalon, “the Facebook pages of several soldiers in mandatory duty and the reserves have featured photographs of celebratory dinners with the participation of extreme right wing activist Baruch Marzel.”
The IDF has its own dining rooms, he added, and there is no reason to send soldiers to civilian dining rooms, or allow them to eat there, “especially when the hosts have a clear and controversial world view.”
Oppenheimer further claimed “the encounters with a person who is indetified with the Kach movement, a student of Rabbi Kahane, a man who sees Baruch Goldstein as a Jewish hero – all of these do not jibe with the IDF’s values and the moral foundations upon which it rests.”
Marzel wrote in response on Facebook that he would sue “foreign agent and European Union collaborator” Oppenheimer over his “lies,” except that they are not libelous. “How can I claim that the lie that IDF soldiers dine at my home on Sabbath eve is libelous? It is praise! Saying that I am a Kach activist is libel? It is praise? The fact that I have such a nice living room is libel?”
Marzel said that he simply gave drink and food “to the righteous IDF soldiers” at the end of the Yom Kippur fast. He added: “And I will give it to them next year as well! And let the haters of Israel eat their hearts out!”
