'On 11 October 1994, Israeli lawmaker Rehavam Ze’evi and his wife Yael sent a brief letter to Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara congratulating the couple on the birth of their son Avner.
Netanyahu was at the time the head of the Likud Party and the leader of Israel’s official opposition.
“Dear Sara and Bibi,” the letter begins. “Many Jewish children and the transfer of the Arabs are the answer to the demographic problem. Mazel tov!”
The Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz found the letter in the archives of Ze’evi, who was also known as “Gandhi.”
But the late general espoused anything but the peaceful politics with which his namesake is associated.
Lived and died by the sword
Ze’evi was a founder of Moledet, an Israeli party espousing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – euphemistically known as transfer – in order to maintain Israel as a Jewish state.
It also emerged last year that Ze’evi was a serial rapist, a cold-blooded killer and an associate of organized crime.
Ze’evi died as he lived. He was assassinated by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 2001, while serving as tourism minister, in order to avenge Israel’s killing of that group’s leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, 40 days earlier.
Ayman Odeh, the head of the Joint List, a group of lawmakers representing Palestinian citizens of Israel in Israel’s parliament, commented on the letter, noting that Ze’evi is “the man whose legacy Netanyahu does not want you to forget.”'
Read more: Israel’s genocidal political culture
