Graves desecrated

last updated 8 January 2015

Jerusalem

The graves of Yitzhak Rabin and other prominent Israelis were vandalized this week, and police suspect ultranationalists angry over the government’s planned withdrawal of all Jewish settlers from Gaza. Rabin, who was prime minister, was assassinated by a right-wing extremist for first proposing that Jewish settlers give up land to Palestinians. The vandals wrote “murderous dog” in Hebrew on his tomb, and scrawled insults on a monument to Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement that led to the creation of Israel. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has received death threats over the pullout plans, condemned the graffiti. “All legitimate forms of protest are acceptable,” he said, “but dishonoring the dead is not.”