Netanyahu mulls legal action over 'incitement' as opposition ramps up rhetoric
Two days after Israeli president warned that the tensions and divisions over the judicial overhaul could spill over into real violence
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud party said on Tuesday it was filing a police complaint regarding alleged incitement by public figures, as tensions are at a fever pitch over the government's proposed legal overhaul.
Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister with the Likud party, resorted to bellicose rhetoric as he addressed Monday's protest in Jerusalem.
“We now must get to the next stage, the stage of war, and war is not waged through speeches. War is waged in a face-to-face battle, head-to-head and hand-to-hand, and that is bound to happen here,” he told a local outlet. "While it’s great to see 100,000 people turn out to protest, that’s not what will clinch the real fight. The real fight will break through these fences and spill over into a real war.”
Other opposition figures employed similar language.
On Monday, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai drew criticism after saying at a popular protest against the reform that he believes Israel could be on the way to becoming a dictatorship, and that could only be stopped through "bloodshed."
"Democratic countries such as ours can become dictatorships," he said, speaking from the mass protest outside Jerusalem's Knesset, where over 90,000 people gathered to protest. "But dictatorships can only return to be democracies through bloodshed. This is what history has taught us."
Last year, Netanyahu won a defamation lawsuit against Olmert.
In an address on Sunday, where he proposed a five-point blueprint for resolving the crisis over the judiciary, Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that political divisions are tearing Israel asunder and could lead to a serious constitutional and social crisis.