Right-wing MKs threaten to ‘blow up’ summer camp hosting bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families

Far-right Israeli lawmakers yesterday threatened to “blow up” and cut funding to a youth due to its plans to arrange a joint summer camp for Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones to the occupation.

During the weekly Education, Culture and Sports Committee meeting, Almog Cohen from the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, announced he will “break and blow up the camp”on the first day at the Ben Shemen Youth Village.

“I will come on the first day of the summer camp and break it up. We will come, 10 MKs, and wish luck to our forces in killing as many terrorists as possible and as few innocents as possible.”

The village, which rents its grounds every summer to different organisations is being used this year by the Israeli-Palestinian group Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF), which Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, slammed as “unforgivable.”

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He added: “We may not have the legal power to prevent you from doing this and to force you to cancel the contract you signed with this contemptible body, but listen carefully, this government will be here for some time. And bodies that act like this, we will make sure to check the public money flowing to them very, very carefully.”

However, the youth village’s Director, Ilana Tischler, noted that the PCFF was a legal organisation and therefore refusing it access to the village would be considered discriminatory.

Yuval Rahamim, co-director of the PCFF, said he was “shocked by the wild and violent attacks, and the explicit threats made by Knesset members on the Education Committee.”