Israeli court indicts Jewish man for inciting murder of Arabs, leftists

A Jewish Israeli man was indicted this week for racist incitement on social media against Arabs and “leftists,” and sentenced to six months in jail.

Eliyahu Eliyav Muallem, a 29-year-old resident of Modiin, was indicted for incitement to violence as well as racist incitement in the Ramle Magistrate’s Court on Thursday as part of a plea deal, according to a report on the Hebrew website Ynet.

As part of the agreement, Muallem admitted to publishing posts on his personal Facebook page that included calls to attack or murder Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, praise for such violent acts, and encouraging discrimination against them.

One such post read: “Proud to be Israeli [after] we don’t leave a single Arab living anywhere in the world.” Another called outright to murder Arabs: “Yalla, murder without checking too much who the person is.”

Muallem also praised the murder of Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped, brutally beaten and burned to death in 2014 by a group of Jewish men. “Very good, yasher koach [a congratulatory greeting] to the next murderer of an Arab,” Muallem wrote, according to the report.

In his online posts, Muallem called for the “deaths of leftists,” and said people who hold such views “have no place here.”

Muallem is said to have expressed regret for his actions. The court noted that Muallem’s posts were open to the public as well as to over 1,000 Facebook friends.

In this technological age, where anyone with a keyboard can publish such things, the court said, there is a need to send a message of deterrence “given the ease and reach of posting on Facebook, where anyone typing [online] is publishing to many.”