Jerusalem-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s teenage son received threats of murder and bullets by mail, Israeli officials said Thursday, the second such warning to the families of Israeli leaders this week.
The threat came during a deep political division of Israel. In a major Wednesday night speech commemorating Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance, Bennett opposed Israel’s polarization and urged citizens not to tear internal divisions into society.
Israeli police said both cases were under investigation, but gave few other details, such as where the items were sent and who might have sent them.
In his speech on Wednesday, the most solemn day of the year, Bennett begged the country to set aside the difference.
“My brothers and sisters, we can’t. We can’t simply allow the same dangerous factional genes to dismantle Israel from within,” Bennett said.
The speech was given the day after his family first received the bullet by mail. This episode urged his 17-year-old son, Yoni, to express his sadness in an Instagram post.
“It’s sad to see real people writing such horrific things,” he said. “It’s crazy to think that he’s alive and breathing like me, but he has a brain made by the devil.”
Israeli officials familiar with the matter confirmed Thursday that a second threatening letter and bullet had been sent to Yoni Bennett. Officials spoke on condition of regulatory anonymity.
Police imposed a gag order on their investigation, and authorities refused to say if there were any suspects.
Many signs point to Jewish militants, but a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities, Israeli military raids on the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli in Jerusalem. It is the most sensitive sanctuary that poses a threat even when tensions with Palestinians increase after a clash with police, and is fighting across borders with Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
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