University official in hot water over Netanyahu comments

The chair of Tel Aviv University’s Executive Council said on Sunday 19 May he thought it was a “pity” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not on board the helicopter that crashed on Sunday killing Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, writes Michael Horovitz for The Times of Israel.

“A pity Netanyahu was not on the helicopter too. One accident can solve many problems for us and the world,” Eli Gelman wrote in a private WhatsApp group, with a link to an article about the accident. In response to a comment in the group calling for him to delete the post, Gelman doubled down on his comment. “Considering the amount of damage Netanyahu has been doing to the State of Israel in a process that began 27 years ago (the ‘slip of the tongue’… that cast the left as separate from the Jews) and that is accelerating at an exponential rate – to pray for an accident that will erase this scoundrel from our lives is not excessive at all,” Gelman wrote.

In a statement after Gelman’s comments were widely reported in the media, Tel Aviv University said they had been written in a private group chat “without bad thoughts or intentions and were deleted after a very short time … Gelman regrets this very much and expresses deep regret for the things he wrote. It goes without saying that they were not said as part of his public role,” the statement said.
Full report on The Times of Israel site