The assailant allegedly knocked on the door of Gefen's home. When Gefen opened the door, the man allegedly punched him in the face and threw eggs at him.
By BEN HARTMANIsraeli author Yehonatan Gefen(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / NACHOOM ASSIS)
Police were still looking on Saturday for the man who assaulted well-known author, songwriter and commentator Yehonatan Geffen at his house in central Israel a day earlier in what is suspected to be a politically motivated assault.David Moshvitz, his attorney and friend, told Channel 2 on Saturday that Geffen received a knock on the door at his home on Moshav Beit Yitzhak in the Sharon region and opened the door because he thought it was his neighbor.Instead, he saw a man he did not recognize who punched him, knocking him to the floor. The man then called him a “lefty,” “murderer” and “traitor,” and threw an egg at him, before fleeing, Moshvitz said.The incident came a day after Geffen posted on Facebook the text of comments he made the night before during a performance in Tel Aviv.“The 17th of March should be declared the Nakba [catastrophe] of the peace camp. The people again chose the person whose rule is based on scaring the people, a racist who on the day of the election told the media that Arabs are making their way to the voting stations in droves. All those who voted for Bibi, do me a favor, don’t cry when your children die in the next stupid [IDF] operation,” Geffen said. “You again voted for a leader who promises us death, not life, fear and not hope.”Geffen’s son, singer Aviv Geffen, took to Twitter on Saturday, saying “Thanks for the concern, dad feels great.It’s easy to hurt someone, harder to hurt an idea.”The attack was condemned by Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett, who said “the attack on Yehonatan Geffen was a barbaric and cowardly act. A man of words and a writer should be answered with words and writing, not with violence.”
