Bar Ilan University mathematician charged with plotting to murder hundreds of Arabs

The State Prosecutor’s Office charges a mathematician from Petah Tikva with hatching an “organized, thorough and detailed” plan over the past three years to murder hundreds of Arab citizens and bring about their “escape and permanent expulsion to Jordan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,” with help from “subversive elements” in the IDF’s Air Force and artillery and armored corps.

The suspect, who was arrested some two weeks ago, tried and failed over the past 18 months to recruit people to help with his plot, prosecutors say. Among his alleged recruitment targets was extremist former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, whose Zehut faction has teamed up with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism ahead of the October 27 election.

When Feiglin didn’t respond, the suspect tried about a month ago allegedly to blackmail the politician into joining, while also implementing “various methods of concealment and obstruction” to avoid the plan being discovered.

The suspect’s name is under a gag order. The State Prosecutor’s Office identifies him as a lecturer at Bar Ilan University who is about 60 years old.

According to prosecutors, the suspect referred to his “extremist, murderous plan” as Ayit, which means “eagle” in Hebrew and was an acronym for Am Ya’ase Transfer, or “The nation will carry out a transfer,” referring to the expulsion of Palestinians.

The suspect began working on his plan in February 2023 and kept working on it until his arrest, the prosecution says in a statement. He decided to develop the plan following the 2021 riots in mixed Arab-Jewish cities, and doubled down on that decision following the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, according to the statement.

The statement says Ayit would have seen 72 armed Jewish terrorists, working in 12 squadrons of six people each, simultaneously attack Arab population centers with guns, axes and support from the hypothetical “subversive elements” in the military. The suspect allegedly exhorted potential recruits to “not even show mercy for the women and their cruel and sickening children.” The atrocities would have been amplified on social media in real time with the aim of getting Arabs to flee en masse from Israel and the West Bank, prosecutors say.

The suspect is charged with preparing to carry out a terrorist attack, blackmailing and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors have asked the court to keep him in custody until the end of the legal proceedings.

Bar Ilan University says it “condemns and is devastated” by the allegations against the suspect and has suspended him.

Feiglin says he and Zehut immediately reported to police the threatening letters from the suspect, and that the party “will continue to act with public responsibility and without fear.”