MK Smotrich hit with 12 hour Twitter ban following Tamimi comments
Bayit Yehudi lawmaker tweets Palestinian teen provocateur convicted of assaulting IDF soldiers should have been shot in knee to restore deterrence; ban did him a service, he says, in getting his message out to exponentially more people.
Bayit Yehudi MK Betzalel Smotrich's Twitter account was blocked for 12 hours after he tweeted that Palestinian teenager and convicted felon Ahed Tamimi should have been shot. Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in prison for her part in a scuffle with IDF soldiers late last year.
In a response to journalist Yinon Magal, who expressed his relief over Tamimi's arrest, Smotrich wrote he would rather have seen her shot by the soldier she attacked.
"In my opinion, she should have been shot, at least in the kneecap. It would have put her in house arrest for life," Smotrich tweeted.
The MK then received a message from Twitter, reading: "We've temporarily restricted some of your account features, so you still have the ability to browse Twitter, but you're only limited to sending direct messages to your followers."
His ban was a warning, lasting only 12 hours.
Nevertheless, Smotrich called the ban "a new record of stifling of speech," claiming that "freedom of expression is reserved only for one side of the political map," meaning the Left.
"I stand behind every word of this tweet and the explanation for it was written extensively (Tuesday) on my Facebook page," he added.
In his post on Facebook, Smotrich explained that actions such as Tamimi's could erode the IDF's power of deterrence, thereby causing further harm to Israeli citizens. Therefore, he opined, her actions should have been dealt with quickly and harshly.
The MK wrote, "When children ... are not afraid to confront the soldiers, the deterrence of the IDF disappears (if children are not afraid then certainly older terrorists will not), and then we get stabbing and shooting attacks by lone terrorists that there is no way to prevent (because the infrastructure to gather intelligence in advance does not exist).
"So an event like the one filmed in the video is a serious and dangerous event whose consequences are murder and injury.
"In order to prevent the next murder, it is very justified to act in any way to restore the IDF's deterrence against the terrorists in Judea and Samaria. Were it up to me, each encounter would end with a sharp and painful decision. After a few of them are confined to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives, there are likely to be fewer who dare to do so and deterrence will be restored."
Smotrich provided further comment on the matter in a Ynet studio interview earlier this week, in which he stated his temporary Twitter ban only helped get his message out to a wider audience.
Asked whether he regretted the tweet in retrospect, the lawmaker said he absolutely did not and that he stood behind every word. "It should be remembered the IDF's defensive ability is predicated on deterrence, which can be achieved in a variety of ways—partly through concluding encounters between an enemy and our forces in a sharp, painful decision."
Smotrich was pressed whether a slap in the face truly justified being shot, to which he reiterated that such photos and videos "seriously eroded" the IDF's deterrent capabilities. "When Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Judea and Samaria terrorists see images like that, deterrence is eroded," he explained.
"When a girl isn't afraid, an adult man will not be afraid to take a car and run over soldiers or a knife and stab someone at a bus stop," he added.
Confronted with the morality of such actions, their efficacy in restoring deterrence aside, the MK said the jeopardy to morality was "arguable," adding he considered Tamimi a terrorist that harms the state's security and endangers its citizens rather than an "innocent teenager guilty of mischief."
Smotrich also claimed during the interview that Tamimi—16 at the time of the incident—should not be considered a girl or even a teenager. "If Ahed Tamimi was walking around with an explosive vest at her age, would you still call her a girl or a teenager?" he wondered.
"I think her and her friends' actions are perpetrated continuously and issue to the world images that highly erode the IDF's deterrent power, and are therefore a type of terrorist attack," he opined.
Interviewers then asked Smotrich whether someone disseminating anti-IDF propaganda is also carrying out a terrorist attack and should be shot. "What Tamimi did certainly does not fall under freedom of speech, I hope," he replied. "She's at war with us. She supports terrorism, wants terrorism and calls for terrorism against IDF soldiers."
His response prompted the interviewers to wonder how such actions serve Israel's interests in the Western world. "The world should be told there is a violent struggle between peoples here—with one side seeking to annihilate the other," the MK answered.
"The service I seek to provide is to prevent soldiers from going into a situation in which they are beaten, cursed at and humiliated without being able to respond. They interest me a lot more than what someone in London thinks," he stated.
Concluding the interview, Smotrich was asked whether he intended to change anything about this tweets now that he had been temporarily banned once. Offering quite an opposite response, the lawmaker said he owed Twitter "a bouquet of flowers."
"The fact they acted as bullies and stifled speech is mostly an embarrassment to them. Only a handful of people defended the move. Most people—from both the Left and the Right—thought this was a serious injury to freedom of speech, especially of MKs," he claimed.
"The end result is that many more Israelis were exposed to my position on the matter. I have 80,000 Twitter followers, and welcome any new ones. I think many more people saw it on other media outlets. They ended up doing me a service," he said contently.
Shahar Hay, Alexandra Lukash and Nir Cohen contributed to this article.
