A mathematics lecturer at Bar-Ilan University has been indicted on allegations that he spent more than three years planning coordinated terrorist attacks intended to kill hundreds of Arab Israelis and Palestinians and drive Arab communities from Israel and the territories.
The defendant, a man in his 60s from Petah Tikva whose name is currently under a court-imposed gag order, called his plan “AIT,” a Hebrew acronym for a phrase meaning “The People Will Carry Out Transfer,” according to an indictment announced Monday by the Central District Attorney’s Office.
Israeli lecturer charged with planning mass terror attacks against Arabs
(Photo: Israel Police)
Prosecutors charged him with preparing to commit an act of terrorism under Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Law, extortion by threats and obstruction of justice. They have asked the court to keep him in custody until the end of legal proceedings.
According to the indictment, the defendant began developing his plan against the backdrop of the May 2021 intercommunal violence in Israel and intensified his efforts after the outbreak of the war following the Oct. 7 attack.
Prosecutors allege that, motivated by nationalist ideology, he sought to carry out multiple terrorist attacks simultaneously across the country, killing hundreds of Arab Israeli citizens, including Bedouins, as well as Palestinians living in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The alleged objective was to cause Arabs to flee or be permanently expelled toward Jordan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
For more than three years, beginning in February 2023 and continuing until his arrest about two weeks ago, prosecutors say the defendant developed what they described as an organized, detailed plan.
His alleged preparations included reconnaissance trips, handwritten documents laying out the proposed operation and its ideological justification, and repeated efforts to recruit participants.
72 attackers divided into 12 cells
Under the plan described in the indictment, 72 Jewish attackers, at least half of them licensed gun owners, would be divided into 12 cells of six people each. The defendant allegedly intended to participate himself.
The groups were to arm themselves with weapons including handguns, rifles, axes and hammers and launch surprise attacks simultaneously in mixed Jewish-Arab cities and Arab communities across Israel.
The indictment further alleges that the defendant envisioned recruiting sympathetic elements within the IDF to provide support for the attacks, including attacks on Arab population centers involving the Air Force, artillery and armored forces.
In a section of his plan titled roughly “How to carry out AIT here and now,” prosecutors say the defendant wrote instructions encouraging participants to conduct mass killings and rapidly seize control of areas of friction, roads, entrances and exits to Arab communities, mixed cities and hospitals.
The document allegedly instructed participants not to show mercy to women or children and warned that stopping the attacks would lead to chaos and the killing of Jews.
According to prosecutors, the defendant believed that simultaneous mass attacks, combined with their real-time dissemination on social media, would prompt Arab citizens of Israel, Bedouins and Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank to flee beyond Israel’s borders.
Attempts to recruit supporters
Prosecutors say the lecturer spent roughly a year and a half attempting to recruit supporters and partners for the alleged plot, but none agreed to participate.
He also allegedly conducted reconnaissance around the Bedouin community of Tuba-Zangariyye in northern Israel to examine access routes and determine how it could be attacked. Prosecutors say he intended the community to serve as one of the plan’s main targets.
The indictment says the defendant also devised a secret recruitment scheme involving Zehut leader Moshe Feiglin.
According to prosecutors, he planned first to recruit Feiglin and then use his assistance to identify additional participants.
The alleged plan called for selected activists to be invited to a Zehut election event without being told the real purpose of the gathering. During the event, prosecutors say, they would be informed that they were being recruited for a terrorist attack to take place the following day and would receive detailed operational instructions.
The defendant allegedly attended two public events held by Feiglin and attempted to arrange a meeting with him and deliver a summary of his plan.
Feiglin did not respond to any of his approaches, according to the indictment.
Alleged attempt to threaten Feiglin
About a month ago, prosecutors say, as the election approached, the defendant wrote a threatening letter addressed to Feiglin after failing to secure his cooperation.
The letter allegedly criticized and insulted Feiglin over his refusal to cooperate and threatened to make the correspondence public if he did not help advance the plan, in what the defendant believed would cause Feiglin political damage ahead of the election.
About two days later, prosecutors allege, the defendant went to Feiglin’s home and handed the letter to a neighbor, asking her to deliver it to him. She did so.
The defendant later attended a Zehut event at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market and, through another woman, gave the party’s director-general several copies of the threatening letter along with an additional letter containing a similar threat, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors allege extensive efforts to avoid detection
The indictment says the defendant took numerous precautions throughout the alleged planning process to conceal his identity and prevent authorities from discovering the plot.
He allegedly wrote documents and letters by hand rather than on a computer, drafted instructions explaining how participants could avoid identification and used disguises while meeting people he sought to recruit.
Those measures allegedly included wearing a face mask, hat and sunglasses, using a false name and borrowing the phones of passersby to contact other people.
In its request to keep the defendant in custody until the end of proceedings, the Central District Attorney’s Office said the alleged conduct stretched over several years and reflected an extremist ideology that led him to develop a detailed, multi-stage plan intended to cause large-scale loss of life among Arab Israelis and Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Prosecutors argued that the defendant’s alleged efforts to advance the plan, combined with its nationalist and ideological motivation and the heightened security tensions during the period in which it was developed, demonstrate that he poses an immediate danger to individuals, the public and the state.