Five Jerusalem residents indicted for alleged incitement on social media
Five residents of east Jerusalem have been indicted for incitement to terrorism, calling for terrorist attacks, and other crimes, charges which required the approval of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit due to the nature of the alleged offenses.
• One of the suspects, a 19-year-old resident of the Anata neighborhood, 4 km. northeast of the Old City, was indicted for calling for violence and terrorism against Israeli civilians and security personnel on several occasions since September 2014, and for giving praise and support for terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
After terrorists killed two Border Police officers near the Temple Mount on July 14 and then were killed on the Mount, the teenager posted on Facebook: “They thought the heroes got old, but they are still alive, and they took them [the policemen] down in the alleyways, at the entrance and at the gates,” adding #Fridayofthemartyrs at the end of his post.
He also published a picture of the murder scene with paramedics attending to the wounded, writing, “To hell and darkness for the rest of life.”
• A 21-year-old resident of the A-Tur neighborhood on the Mount of Olives, 1 km. east of the Old City, was indicted for posting words of support on Facebook for the terrorist attack shortly after it was carried out, and calls for carrying out more terrorist attacks
Wrote the young man on Facebook: “With stones, axes, fire bombs and [cigarette] lighters. Spontaneously and not planned, from A-Tur. Three martyrs left Umm el-Fahm [in northern Israel]. A thousand condolences, you are before us and we are in your footsteps. We have grown up on the path of death of the holy ones.”
The “three martyrs” was in reference to the three men from Umm el-Fahm who carried out the attack.
On the same day, he wrote another post, stating, “Today four martyrs from Jerusalem, one from the Dehaishe camp [just south of Bethlehem] and three from inside [the Green Line, i.e. Umm el-Fahm]. Today Palestine receives four martyrs. Our slain are in Paradise and theirs are in fire [hell].
• A 17-year-old published a picture of two of the terrorists who carried out the attack, writing, “A picture of the two martyrs from the heroic attack.”
In another post on the same day he wrote, “The martyrs resemble the beauty of the Dome of the Rock, the beauty of the Old City, four martyrs are going up on this blessed Friday to prove that # the intifada is continuing.”
• A 26-year old from the Isawiya neighborhood, on Mount Scopus near Hadassah-University Medical Center, and a 23-year-old from the Shuafat refugee camp in the capital’s northeast, who were also indicted both posted on Facebook calls to violence and terrorism against civilians and security personnel on several occasions, and praised terrorist groups.
The State Attorney’s Office has requested that the suspects be jailed until the end of legal proceedings against them.