Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein ordered bodyguards to be provided to Bayit Yehudi faction head Ayelet Shaked on Monday after she received threats on her life.
Edelstein told Army Radio that he was particularly disturbed by pictures circulated online of her in an SS uniform, similar to an infamous picture of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin before his assassination.
"We were shocked to see clear threats to MK Shaked," Edelstein said. "We are obligated to protect our MKs from harm."
Shaked is expected to be sworn in as justice minister by next Monday.
Shaked has been a force in Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi party, finishing near the top of the party’s list in internal primaries, leading many influential committees, including on integrating haredim into the IDF, and being a spokeswoman for the Right in attacking judicial activism by the Supreme Court.
But she is also only 39, not a lawyer, and the same steadfastness of purpose that has made her popular on the Right have earned her jeers on the Left.
Shaked's immediate predecessor as justice minister, Labor MK Tzipi Livni, expressed reservations about her appointment in an interview with Army Radio early Thursday.
Asked about Shaked, Livni said, “Between myself and Bayit Yehudi generally and also with Shaked, there are deep ideological differences. She has put forth her view that she wants to weaken the Supreme Court, and I want to strengthen it.
“I hope that one thing happens: that with her increasing familiarity with the legal system and the law, she will understand the importance of these apparatuses to the State of Israel; and the quicker she understands them, we, as an opposition, will have less of a need to stand as a wall to defend them,” Livni continued.
Former justice minister Yossi Beilin also had criticism for Shaked, starting with the assumption that the appointment was bad news, but “not as bad” as if Bennett had become defense minister.
Part of the reason Beilin made that point was that whereas the defense minister has relative autonomy, Shaked “can’t do anything too removed from the law,” because the justice minister “acts within a system,” and her actions are more “in public view.”
By Gil Hoffman, Yonah Jeremy Bob
