Man charged for urging ‘Holocaust on Arabs’ online

Prosecutors charged a man from central Israel Monday with incitement to violence and racism over Facebook posts three years ago that called for an Arab Holocaust and burning Arab people alive.

Bar Rozen, 26, from the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva, was accused of publishing a number of posts on his Facebook page that were racist against Arabs and incited to violence, prosecutors said.

The posts came during the summer of 2014, after three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank, setting in motion events that would lead to the revenge slaying of an East Jerusalem teen and war with Hamas-led fighters in the Gaza Strip.

The indictment was filed with the approval of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit because the nature of the charges touch on freedom of speech issues, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

According to the indictment, in one post Rozen wrote on June 30, 2014, “A Holocaust for Arab citizens. Men and women, it makes no difference, also Arab Israelis I would be prepared to kill each one with bare hands!!!!!”

The post came the day the bodies of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, were found following a several week search, after being murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

On July 2, 2014, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, an East Jerusalem Arab teenager, was killed by a group of Jews as revenge for the slain Israelis.

On July 11 of that year Rozen declared in a post that “If it was legally possible to burn Arabs I would happily do so!” and on July 22 he wrote “We need to start kidnapping Arabs and not put them in ‘prison’ which is a hotel. I have a great bomb shelter in my building, something along the lines of The Saw” — a reference to the franchise of movies about a sadistic murderer who kidnaps his victims and then tortures them to death.

In the indictment prosecutors noted that the posts were available for all of his 490 friends to see, as well as the public, and that he was the only one in control of the account.

The charges were announced at the same time that a cousin of Abu Khdeir was charged with terror activity over an alleged plot to carry out an attack.

Israel has stepped up enforcement in recent years against people making online comments deemed inciting.

Earlier this month a man was arrested after posting threats to participants ahead of the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade in the capital. The man was ordered to stay out of the city until the event finished.

Last month five East Jerusalem residents were charged with incitement to terror over Facebook messages they posted following a July 14 attack in Jerusalem’s Old City in which two Israeli policemen were killed.