Israeli police to probe threats against President Rivlin's life

Israel's police said Sunday it would investigate threats against President Reuven Rivlin's life, after he condemned an attack by Jewish extremists that killed a Palestinian toddler and gravely injured his family.

Rivlin received a number of threats on his Facebook page, which were reported to the police, a spokesperson for the president's office confirmed to Xinhua.

Rivlin said on Friday he felt "shamed" that the killers of Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsha came from "my own people," according to a statement from his office.

Dawabsha was burned to death in an apparent price tag attack by Jewish extremists in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank.

The president also criticized the Israeli security forces for their "lax" enforcement of law against Jewish perpetrators of militant and vandalism acts against Palestinians, known as "price tag" acts.

In response to his statement, the president received messages on his official Facebook page calling him a "traitor" and "a bloody loser."

One comment hoped Rivlin would receive "an end worse than Ariel Sharon," former prime minister who suffered a stroke in 2006 and died in 2014, known for carrying out Israel's disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip.

Rivlin, who comes from a traditional right-wing background, emphasized last year the need to build bridges between different sectors of Israeli society and spoke against discrimination and in favor of equal rights for minorities in Israel, including Arab Israelis.

Other than his comment on Friday, the president visited the Dawabsha family at hospital, condemning extremist Jews who "lost their humanity."

"Their path is not my path, it's not the path of the state of Israel or the Jewish people."

Although Israeli security officials announced a crackdown on price tag perpetrators, according to the Yesh Din human rights group, about 85 percent of the cases are closed due to insufficient evidence or failure to locate suspects in the past 10 years.

Furthermore, only 7.4 percent of investigations yielded an indictment, according to the group's report in May.