Court extends remand of anti-government activist alleged to have incited violence against PM

The Haifa Magistrate’s Court decides to keep anti-government activist Yolanda Yavor, a Tel Aviv University lecturer, in custody till tomorrow at noon after she was detained over social media posts allegedly inciting violence against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others.

She was arrested following a complaint from the right-wing Im Tirzu organization over a post she published on Facebook last week in which she derided the premier as a “traitor.”

“The only choice is to be — that is, to fight the traitor, the mouthpieces, the damned collaborators and his bargain-bin Freikorps militias with all the strength and all means — or not to be,” she wrote. “Make the right choice, my brothers and sisters… There won’t be another round.”

The professor’s attorney, Oshrat Kirma, calls the decision to extend her detention a “mistake” and denies her posts represent actual calls for violence against elected officials.

“We are talking about an interpretation [of the posts], rather than a post that actually calls for a violent act. Many posts, from a variety of groups, exist on the web that call for actual, literal physical violence and none of them are investigated,” she tells reporters after her client’s hearing.

She adds that the interpretations of the prosecution require extensive extrapolation in order to make sense of them.

“To say that there is a connection between the post and an act is simply baseless,” she says.