Report: Indicted professor’s manifesto called for 72 assailants to strike Arab communities simultaneously in Oct. 7-style attack

A 20-page manifesto by the Bar-Ilan University professor accused of plotting attacks on hundreds of Arabs envisioned a surprise, mass-casualty assault resembling Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, with 72 Jewish attackers striking Arab communities simultaneously, Hebrew media reports.

The plan called for “mass killings” and the seizure of roads, Arab communities, mixed cities, and hospitals. It also envisioned help from “subversive elements” in the IDF’s Air Force, artillery, and armored corps, and warned that any halt would lead to “unbearable chaos and then a massacre of Jews.”

The document also instructed recruits not to show mercy to women or children and to “harden [their] hearts.”

A separate, densely handwritten letter to Moshe Feiglin, whose Zehut faction has teamed up with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism ahead of the October 27 election, threatened to cause him public damage ahead of the election if he did not help advance the plan.

An indictment filed by the State Prosecutor’s Office says the professor also delivered copies to Zehut’s director-general, along with another letter containing a similar threat.

Hebrew media also reports that right-wing podcaster Tamir Dortal met with the professor and was presented with his plan but did not alert police.

Dortal tells Ynet that the professor presented himself as a retired academic with what he perceived as an “absurd” and “horrific” theoretical plan. He says he rejected it, asked whether the professor had a weapon – and was told he did not – then ordered him to leave.

“I regret not contacting the police at that moment,” Dortal says, calling it “an error in judgment.” He says he cooperated fully with authorities after the professor’s arrest and denies supporting or helping advance the alleged plot.