An Israeli right-wing activist in prison for illegal political activity has been arrested for sending a threatening letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The prisoner, who was not identified in Israeli media reports, is in a central Israel prison and is 22 years old. He has been accused of involvement in “price tag” attacks and issuing threats to left-wing leaders.

In the letter, the prisoner expressed his opposition to Netanyahu’s decision to release Palestinian Authority terrorists in order to jump-start peace talks.

“How are you releasing murderous terrorists? We’ll hurt you and the government like Rabin was hurt,” the letter to Netanyahu said, referring to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He was arrested in prison and found to have at least one knife in his possession.

The leader of the Tunisian opposition party and a fierce critic of the ruling Islamist regime was assassinated by armed killers shooting from a motorbike outside of his home in the capital of Tunis on Thursday.

Mohammed Brahmi, leader of the nationalist Movement of the People party, was the second opposition party leader to be assassinated this year. In February, Chokri Belaid was also shot outside his house in Tunis.

Eleven bullets were fired at Brahmi, whose party has been winning support because of popular unrest over the Ennahda party, which is accused of encouraging Islamist violence

Update at the end of the article.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid woke up this morning to find that someone had posted a picture of him dressed as Hitler, one day after the Knesset passed on first reading his proposed budget that includes tax hikes and spending cuts.

Written on the fake picture of Lapid, complete with a Hitler-style moustache, were the words, “Israeli economy’s hateful enemy.”

It is not clear who was behind the prank, but he or she managed to arouse a storm of protest.

“This is shocking,” said public relation official Ran Rahav.

It is shocking indeed, but then he took it to the extreme and started digging up the blood libel against the national religious community following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in 1995.

“It is with great sorrow that the whole country has not internalized what happened before 18 years ago, when Yitzchak Rabin was murdered. In those black days before the murder, a picture of Rabin was posted showing him dressed as Hitler.

“I hope the police will immediately arrest whoever carried out this horrible posting against Finance Minister Yair Lapid.”

UPDATE: Numerous bloggers are now saying that they believe that PR official Ran Rahav or an associate of his was involved in creation of the photo, based on the suspicious manner in which Rahav tried to upload and publicize the image.

Years ago, it was exposed that the picture of Yitzchak Rabin in an SS uniform was created and distributed by a Shabak agent.

Newly-appointed Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin has warned one of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s grandchildren that her remarks about him are grounds for libel.

Noa Rotman, after hearing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Feiglin as of one several deputy speakers, wrote on Facebook, “Feiglin is the man who established Zu Artzeinu, the movement that was responsible or the incitement that brought democracy in Israel to a new low and brought about the murder of the Prime Minister of Israel.”

She added that the appointment left her with the feeling of a being outside her own country.

Feiglin wrote on Facebook Tuesday that Rotman’s logic also could be used to conclude that the “architects of the Oslo Accords are responsible for the murder of 2,000 Israelis been killed in post-Oslo terrorist attacks.”

He added, “I feel sorry for Rotman, but if she continues with this kind of approach, I will be forced to sue for libel.”

Terrorism broadly takes two forms: against random individuals who happen to be at a market place or on a bus at the wrong time; or against specific individuals because of who they are. The latter in turn divides into two: against broad categories of people (the military, Jews, people who wear eyeglasses) and against specific public figures, either individuals or institutions. In effect, these last are assassinations (defined by Merriam-Webster as “to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons”).

Horrific as the first two genres are, assassinations are the most terrifying and effective. Whereas the first two can happen to anyone and have the effect of creating a universal but vague dread, the third focuses on a small pool of targets and sends a specific signal to others not to follow in their footsteps. In general, therefore, assassinations inspire the most consequential fear, intimidate the most, and have the greatest consequences.

Actual public Western victims of Islamist violence have included:

1980: Ali Akbar Tabataba’i, Iranian dissident, in the United States* 1980: Faisal Zagallai, Libyan dissident, in the United States 1990: Rashad Khalifa, Egyptian religious innovator, in the United States* 1990: Meir Kahane, Israel politician of American origins, in the United States* 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses* 1991: Ettore Capriolo, Italian translator of The Satanic Verses 1993: William Nygaard, Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses 2004: Theo van Gogh, Dutch artist* 2010: Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist 2010: Lars Vilks, Swedish artist 2010: Jyllands-Posten, Danish newspaper 2012: Charlie Hebdo, French satiric magazine 2013: Lars Hedegaard, Danish historian and political analyst Notes: * indicates a fatality. Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi, head of the Libyan government, was an Islamist in 1980. I do not list here victims of Muslim but non-Islamist assassinations, such as Malcolm X in 1965. For the record, a Palestinian Christian killed Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Statistical comments:

(1) Other than one isolated attack in 2004, this listing of 13 inexplicably divides into two distinct periods, seven in 1980-93 and five in 2010-13.

(2) Listed by their identity, the victims include 8 connected to culture and the arts, 3 political figures, 1 religious one, and 1 analyst. Of the eight cultural attacks, 4 involved cartoons, 3 Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, and one a movie, Submission.

(3) Geographically, 8 took place in Europe, 4 in the United States, and one in Japan. Of the European cases, three took place in tiny Denmark. Britain and Germany are conspicuously missing from this list. Oddly, the 4 American instances took place in either 1980 or 1990.

(4) State involvement can be discerned only in the first 3 cases (Iranian, Libyan, and Saudi, respectively).

(5) In terms of deadliness, 5 attacks led to a fatality, 8 did not.

And a personal note by way of conclusion: the Feb. 5 attack on Hedegaard – a friend and colleague at the Middle East Forum – inspired me to compile this listing in the hopes that aggregating these loathsome crimes will help wake more Westerners to the danger within.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

Palestinian terrorist group, The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) has responded to the assassination of Hamas no. 2 Ahmad al-Jaabari, verbally at least, Palestinian news website, Ma’an reported.

“With this assassination, Israel has opened the gates of hell,” PRC spokesman Abu Mujahid told Ma’an.

“Cowardly settlers had better flee to shelters where we will bury them and they will never be able to leave,” Abu Mujahid added. ”The occupation has started the battle and we will respond very fiercely to their crimes.”

Meretz MK Zahava Galon says killing Jabri was not worthwhile and that Israel should negotiate immediately to stop the violence.

Chadash MK Dov Hanin asked, “When will they learn that after each assassination there will be revenge.”

Israeli leftists and Arabs decry defensive IDF operation on Gaza, calling for demonstration tonight in front Likud Tel-Aviv HQ.

Attorneys for Pathologist Yehuda Hiss, considered the man who knows “where all the bodies are buried” (including the questionable circumstances of the assassination of a prime minister some seventeen years ago) are saying the rumors about his being fired by Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman s on Monday are premature.

Hiss has been a controversial figure for years, and his Abu Kabir forensic lab has been involved in a number of strange controversies and scandals revolving around the collection of bodies organs as well reports of missing body parts and other organs from dead bodies that passed through his lab.

Families have complained for years that the bodies of dead family members they received back were missing organs, and the bodies were stuffed with other materials to hide the missing parts.

Initially the Health Ministry wanted to try to reunite the found body parts and bury them with their original bodies, but the job of identifying each unlabeled organ and sample to their their original owner has proven to difficult to do.

Hundreds of people have contacted the Health Ministry to try to reclaim body parts over the past few months since the initiative “Final Resting Place” was launched, where the Health Ministry tries to link as many parts to their owners as they can so they can get a proper burial.

But due to the difficulty in identifying all the parts to their original bodies, the Health Ministry created a mass grave for many of the 8288 body parts, many of them not documented, that Hiss and his lab had collected over the years.

Some are upset their family member’s body parts went into a mass grave.

Others have wondered why it took so long for Hiss to be fired, and that is a whole other story.