Case dismissed against acamedic who called to break right-wingers’ necks

The State Prosecutor’s Office announced on Thursday that it will close its probe into a chemistry professor at Ben-Gurion University who had been accused of incitement to violence against right-wing activists.

In June 2011, Eyal Nir posted a scathing criticism of the Jerusalem Day flag march through Jerusalem, which resulted in the arrests of 24 right-wing activists, calling on the world to “come and help break these bastards’ necks.”

Two weeks after the original posting, Nir retracted his original statement, writing “I was wrong, it was a wrong statement. I am committed to the principles of non-violence and believe that the struggles must be firmly conducted peacefully.”

Prosecutors ruled that there was insufficient evidence that Nir’s posting could have seriously inspired readers to violence.

A spokesperson for the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, the organization that filed the original complaint against Nir, slammed the decision and said it planned to appeal. “A senior lecturer who incites to murder cannot evade it with such flimsy arguments” said the Forum.

Nachi Eyal, the director general of the Forum, was quoted in Haaretz saying “law enforcement establishment cannot remain silent about such a clear incitement for murder.”