'Free Yigal Amir 2' campaign unveiled

Right-wing activists to use film, literature to highlight "discrimination of Jewish security prisoners."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Yigal Amir evil 248.88 (photo credit: AP)
Yigal Amir evil 248.88
(photo credit: AP)
Right-wing activists on Monday unveiled a second campaign calling for the release of Yigal Amir, the assassin of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The decision came Sunday in a meeting of the 'Committee for Democracy,' after the cabinet voted to release some 200 security prisoners as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Right-wing extremists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel participated in the meeting, which also came in the wake of President Shimon Peres's refusal to pardon Jewish security prisoners. A film called "Free Yigal Amir 2," will be part of the campaign. The film will include footage of Hizbullah celebrations following killer Samir Kuntar's release last month as part of the prisoner exchange for the bodies of captured IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Kuntar killed three Israelis in a terror attack in Nahariya in 1979. The film will also show pictures of Peres in a Kaffiyeh and photos of 15-year-old Danny Katz, who was kidnapped and killed in December 1983 by five Israeli Arabs. A prison committee recently rejected a request by the five convicts for clemency, saying that the men were still a danger "to every Jewish child that would cross their paths." The group aims to distribute 1,000 copies of the film with the help of a US millionaire. Additionally, material will be distributed highlighting what the activists said was the discrimination of Jewish security prisoners compared with their Palestinian counterparts. "I don't see a problem with a film like this that has the goal of preserving democracy and balance. If Samir Kuntar goes home, there is no reason why Yigal Amir should rot in jail," Marzel said during Sunday's meeting. "The leftists need to understand that democracy means real and full equality. I personally think that Kuntar's crime is many times more severe than Amir's. For the sake of justice and fairness there is no reason that Amir and other national prisoners should stay in prison when Israel gives goodwill gestures to killers." Marzel stressed that he was opposed to Rabin's assassination and that there was no message of support for his murder in the film. It comes less that a year after the group's first film calling for Amir's release, which featured Ben-Gvir and Marzel alongside singer Ariel Zilber and Amir's wife Larissa Trimbobler.