Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, slammed Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai for ordering the removal of a large sign depicting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh on their knees. The sign argues that “Peace can only be reached with vanquished enemies.”
הציוץ הזה כ״כ מטורלל ומראה שרון חולדאי נמצא באזור החיוג של בל״ד לפי דעותיו. אם כך, למה הוא כה צבוע? מדוע הוא לא מוסר את שייח מוניס חזרה לבעליו הערבים? https://t.co/3aimIEx1r1
— Yair Netanyahu (@YairNetanyahu) February 14, 2020
Young Netanyahu called the tweet “wacky” and argued it shows that Huldai, a former IAF pilot, is “in the same dial zone as [Arab-Israeli political party] Balad.”
Calling the mayor “a hypocrite,” Netanyahu asked why he doesn’t return Sheikh Munis to “its Arab owners?”
Sheikh Munis was a Palestinian village near the pre-state city of Tel Aviv. During the 1948 War of Independence, the Arabs who lived there left their homes; the University of Tel Aviv now stands on the land that they vacated.
In his own tweet, Huldai said that the image in the sign “incites [people to use] violence and is reminiscent of [propaganda used] by ISIS and the Nazis, groups we do not wish to be among.”
“Even in election times,” he said referring to the upcoming March elections, “there are redlines… To humiliate the other is not our way.”
Abbas had repeatedly said he wishes to reach a peace agreement with Israel and has called for the Palestinian struggle to be a non-violent one.
Haniyeh is the leader of Hamas, the radical Islamic party which claims they are working to bring about a day of judgment in which “the trees and stones will cry out: Oh Muslim! Oh servant of God! There is a Jew behind me! Come and kill him!” This is an official part of the Hamas charter.
Netanyahu again slammed Huldai, asking if he means to return Sarona to the Germans. Sarona was a colony of Christian Germans who were called Templers. Their little community was destroyed with the outbreak of the Second World War because British authorities declared them to be enemy citizens and deported them to Australia.Like many Germans before the crimes of the Nazi regime were made public, the Templers viewed themselves as loyal Germans; some of them did in fact use Nazi symbols publicly prior to the war breaking out.
The State of Israel officially compensated the Templers for their lost assets in Tel Aviv and elsewhere for the sum of 54 million Deutsche Marks ($30 million) between 1952-1962.