Just hours before Baruch Goldstein killed at least 29 Palestinians at a Hebron mosque, a radio station sponsored by the settlers movement broadcast what is being called an incitement to commit acts of violence against Palestinians.
Such was the charge made by Environment Minister Yossi Sarid during Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting Monday.
Sarid presented the transcript of a broadcast aired the night before the Feb. 25 Hebron massacre by Channel 7, a radio station sponsored by the Gush Emunim settlers movement.
The transcript indicated that two broadcasters drank to the health of Yoram Skolnick and Ami Popper.
Popper opened fire on Palestinian laborers near Rishon le-Zion in May 1990, killing seven and wounding 10 others.
Skolnick is accused of shooting a captured and bound Palestinian who was being held pending the arrival of Israeli soldiers. The episode was filmed and shown on Israel Television to a shocked nation several months ago.
The two men are referred to five times in the course of the broadcast transcript as “tzadikim,” or righteous men.
According to Sarid, the transcript records that another person appearing on the broadcast said at the end of the program that Skolnick and Popper had done “what we would all like to do but have not the guts to do.”
“If that is not incitement to murder, I don’t what it is,” Sarid told Israel Radio.
The station head for Channel 7, asked by Israel Radio for her reaction, refused to comment, saying that she would respond only on her station.
Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair has announced that he will investigate the station’s legal status.
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