Police have arrested 63 suspects on charges of incitement and support for terrorism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror assault, the Israel Police said on Monday.
The Hamas terrorist organization killed at least 1,400 Israelis and wounded more than 4,100 in a massive offensive launched from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, which included the firing of thousands of rockets at Israel and the infiltration of the Jewish state by terrorist forces.
The terrorists butchered men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled and infants—some were decapitated while others were raped or burned alive. At least 199 hostages, including children, were taken to Gaza, Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel confirmed on Monday.
The Jerusalem District Police has been “operating in an increased format, in cooperation with other security agencies, to monitor and address publications on social media networks that incite terrorism and violence,” warned the Israel Police on Monday.
Indictments will be filed “in the coming days,” added the statement.
Among other suspects, police officers arrested a 20-year-old female resident of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, Israel’s Walla news site reported. The suspect allegedly shared pictures of fallen IDF soldiers on social media and praised their Palestinian killers.
In another case, officers detained a cook who worked in a central Jerusalem restaurant. After losing his job due to his public support for Hamas terror, he reportedly threatened to carry out an attack on the diner.
Amid fighting on Israel’s southern and northern borders, as well as ongoing attempts to open a front in Judea and Samaria, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir last week said his ministry was preparing for possible Arab riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities.
During a visit to the western Negev city of Sderot, one of the communities attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, Ben-Gvir announced that he ordered Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai to make preparations for “a scenario of ‘Guardian of the Walls II,’ which I think is looming.”
Ben-Gvir’s remarks referred to the widespread Arab rioting in Israeli cities with large numbers of Arab and Jewish residents that took place during the IDF’s May 2021 aerial operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Over the weekend, suspected Hamas sympathizers burned down a bicycle shop in Tayibe, an Arab city in central Israel, after its owner donated 50 bicycles to survivors of Hamas’s terror assault on southern Israel.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Kol Yehudi news outlet shared footage of what it said showed Israeli Arabs from the central city of Umm al-Fahm conducting military exercises at a training camp in northern Israel.
“All of them are well known to the authorities, but Gaza-Hamas was also known to the authorities,” Kol Yehudi journalist Elchanan Groner wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “The problem is the concept. These guys are the enemy.”
