Israeli police were set to open an investigation on Monday after videos casting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin as Nazis were uploaded to YouTube.
The clips, uploaded by a user named “Asher,” feature Rivlin and Netanyahu in SS uniforms, speaking what sounds like German. “I am a self-hating, hypocritical president,” the Hebrew subtitles on the video of Rivlin read. “When Jews are murdered, it doesn’t really interest me… I am a Nazi Jew-hater.”
The videos were the latest in a string of internet memes attacking the president over his condemnation of a firebombing attack, allegedly carried out by Jewish extremists, that left an 18-month-old Palestinian baby dead on Friday.
In a separate video, with Netanyahu presented in Nazi uniform and with a Hitler mustache, the prime minister is dubbed saying, “Welcome to the concentration camp of Israel… We are deathly afraid of Muslims. Jewish blood is not worth much.”
Police were set to be investigating the case as a violation of an Israeli prohibition against “insulting a public servant,” according to the Ynet news website. The police cyber unit was tasked with probing the posts.
The man behind the videos, a New York resident, told Ynet no one had informed him that he was being investigated. He admitted to uploading the videos, as well as a photo of Rivlin in a keffiyeh. He also confessed to photoshopping photos last year of then-finance minister Yair Lapid, Rivlin, and then-justice minister Tzipi Livni as Nazis.
“No one told me they were going to investigate me. There is no crime here,” he said. “I made these videos and the picture of Rivlin in a kaffiyeh and the Hamas symbol — the police know this.”
