Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday brushed off Palestinian Arab threats to haul him before an international court for proposing to behead Arab citizens disloyal to the state.
“I saw the Palestinian Authority will go to the International Criminal Court in Haag over my remarks that we must act forcefully against our enemies and those who act against the State of Israel,” he wrote on Facebook, according to AFP.
“They will get an answer to that from me as defense minister,” he said, reflecting his aspirations for the powerful post after the March 17 general election.
Liberman on Sunday attended an elections panel at a college, with media reports quoting him as saying of Israeli Arabs that “those who are with us should get everything”.
However “those who are against us… one must take an axe and chop their heads off, otherwise we won’t survive here”.
The PA government, which met in Ramallah on Tuesday, issued a condemnation of the “racist call to murder by the radical Liberman, which says to behead Palestinians with an axe.”
In the condemnation, the PA labelled the statement “an official call as clear as day to murder Palestinians and Arabs after conducting a campaign of ethnic purification, which he is preaching.”
“The (PA) government emphasized that the hatred and incitement of Liberman obligates the international community to condemn him, to boycott him and stand him on trial for his terrorist statements in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC) like terrorists who threaten humanity and spread ideas and concepts against humanity,” concluded the statement.
Liberman’s comments were also condemned by Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, who on Monday called Liberman the “Jewish ISIS”, in reference to the brutal Islamic State terrorist regime.
In his comments on Tuesday, Liberman also denounced remarks by a spokesman of Tibi’s Arab Joint List, in which he compared ISIS and the Zionist movement.
“Where did ISIS learn these crimes? Look what the Zionist movement did in 1948. Rapes, pillaging, murders, massacres, committed here in these parts as well,” the spokesman, Raja Zaatry said at an elections discussion at a university in central Israel.
In response, Liberman said he would act to revoke Zaatry’s citizenship “after the elections”.