Israel Police on Tuesday arrested Haredi journalist Israel Frey on suspicion he helped incite Palestinian terrorism and violence and after failing to show up to police questioning five times.
Frey was taken in for questioning by police officers and released a few hours later.
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Journalist Israel Frey (center) and his attorney Gaby Lasky (right)
(Photo: Moti Kimchi)
After his release, the dovish journalist hit out at the incoming hardline government, labeling it "fascistic."
"The new regime is already here, it's fascistic and it wants us weak and scared," he said.
"There's only one way to raise our heads against a fascistic regime. There's no middle, there's no mediocracy and there's no civility. Only full equality, full liberty for any person between the sea and the Jordan [River] and we'll win."
Frey's attorney and former member of Knesset Gaby Lasky decried what she described as the "politicization" of law enforcement.
"Frey's release without bail conditions shows that this is a baseless political arrest designed to terrorize, silence and deter. Those arrested according to anti-terrorism laws are never released within a few hours," she said.
"It's hard not to wonder who in the State Prosecutor's Office approved this madness. The police are becoming more politicized and this is a warning sign to anyone who considers themselves an opposition to the new regime. Today it's Frey, tomorrow it's all of us."
The police received three complaints about two of Frey's Twitter posts from recent months, which were supposedly inciting Palestinian terrorism against Israelis.
One of the complaints was filed following a September tweet in which he praised an undocumented West Bank Palestinian who was arrested in Jaffa with explosives and weapons on his person who admitted to having planned to carry out a terror attack in Tel Aviv.
Frey called him a "hero" and said that he "deserved a medal" for making the trip from Nablus to Tel Aviv without killing innocent Israelis.
"Even though all the Israelis around him take some part in oppressing, crushing, killing of his own people, he still sought legitimate targets and avoided harming innocent people," his tweet read.
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Noa Lazar was shot and killed at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem
(Photo: EPA)
Another complaint dealt with an October tweet about the killing of Sgt. Noa Lazar, 18, who was fatally shot at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
Frey said that “attacks on security forces are not terror.”
The police summoned the journalist for questioning several times since the complaints, but he refused to show up repeatedly.
After being called up for the fifth time, Frey on Monday shared a tweet in which he protested his summoning while giving Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair as an example to other controversial social media personalities who receive different treatment.
"Just a question - how is it that Yair Netanyahu calls his father's prosecutors traitors, hints at the death penalty and walks free, while I - on the basis of a completely legitimate tweet that differentiates between innocent people and soldiers - am summoned for a police investigation?" he tweeted.