JERUSALEM – An Israeli man has been indicted for inciting both anti-Israeli and anti-Palestinian hatred in his Facebook posts. In the most notorious of them, he described his vivid dream of “decapitating” Arab babies with a butcher knife.
Between 2012 and 2017, Petah Tikva resident Zohar Zuaretz issued a barrage of Facebook posts urging more than one thousand of his followers to attack and kill Palestinians. The man also lashed out against the Israeli security forces over their alleged lack of commitment to protecting the Jews.
Zuaretz’s messages were not left unnoticed by the Israeli authorities. On Monday, the State Attorney’s Office charged the 33-year-old with multiple counts of incitement to violence and racism. The Israeli was also charged with supporting the Kach extremist group, a radical Orthodox Jewish, ultranationalist party banned in Israel in 1994.
In one his most shocking posts, Zuaretz bragged about having a “rosiest” dream where he “decapitates” Arab babies at a maternity ward with a butcher knife.
Calling the Arab political party in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, “inconceivable,” in another post, the man urged his Facebook followers to “burn” the Arabs and the “leftist” Israelis.
“A true Jew will not join this evil and heretical army. Go and do things alone,” he wrote in another post, calling on Orthodox Jews to start a rebellion. “I expect all the soldiers… to aim their weapons in the right direction.”
Besides urging the Israeli settlers to have the courage to “load a weapon and spray the evil policemen and soldiers,” Zuaretz, at the same time, tagged Israeli law enforcement vehicles and public buses with anti-Arab messages.
After reviewing the charges against the Petah Tikva man, on Monday, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit said that Zuaretz poses a “clear risk of continuing criminal offences on the internet, which would endanger the security of the Arab public and security forces.”
