Naftali Bennett death threat: Israeli PM's family receives second bullet in the post

Israeli authorities have tightened security around prime minister and his family as they investigate

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his wife, Gilat, take part in the ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at Warsaw Ghetto Square at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. AP

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's family has received a death threat and a bullet in the post for the second time in a week.

An official told AP that Mr Bennett's 17-year-old son Yoni was the target of the threats, but did not share who was thought to be behind them.

Israeli authorities have tightened security around the prime minister and his family as they investigate.

Yoni shared his feelings on the first incident, which happened on Tuesday, on Instagram.

“It’s just sad to see that real people write such horrible things,” he said. “To think that he lives and breathes like me but has a brain that was created by the devil is crazy.”

Police have said they are looking into both incidents and have placed a gag order on the investigations, releasing few details.

The threats came as Israel took part in an annual ritual honouring the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

At Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust, Mr Bennett late on Wednesday called on the world to stop comparing the Holocaust to other events in history.

He spoke after the presidents of both Ukraine and Russia drew parallels between their continuing war and the genocide during the Second World War.

“As the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust — but no,” he said. “No event in history, cruel as it may have been, is comparable to the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Mr Bennett leads a narrow coalition that recently lost its parliamentary majority. His government is made up of eight parties that have little in common beyond their shared animosity towards former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Netanyahu, now the opposition leader, has worked hard to deepen divisions within the coalition.

The current prime minister's government was formed after four inconclusive elections, underscoring the fissures in society over key issues, including the conflict with the Palestinians and relations between religious and secular Jews.

Critics have accused Mr Bennett, who leads a small, religious nationalist party, of abandoning his core hardline beliefs.

One member of his Yamina party was sanctioned this week as a “defector” for repeatedly supporting the opposition in hundreds of votes. Another member of his party recently resigned from the coalition, leaving the fragile alliance without a parliamentary majority.