Israeli forces detain four Hebron Arabs for supporting Iran during war

Israeli forces on Tuesday night arrested four Palestinians from the Judea city of Hebron on suspicion of incitement to terrorism and expressing support for an enemy state in wartime, police said on Wednesday.

The suspects—three men aged 22, 24 and 50 as well as a 55-year-old woman—were apprehended by Israel Defense Forces soldiers after police monitored their social media, the Israel Police announced.

One of the suspects, identified as a local legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority in Hebron, “posted on social media eulogies and praise for Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran who was eliminated by the IDF at the beginning of ‘Operation Roaring Lion,” according to the statement.

All four Palestinians are being investigated on suspicion of praising, encouraging or supporting terrorist violence, as well as expressing “identification with a hostile organization,” police added.

The Israeli and U.S. militaries carried out preemptive airstrikes targeting the Islamic regime on Saturday morning to neutralize the threat posed by Tehran, killing Khamenei in the opening shot of the air campaign that Jerusalem dubbed “Operation Roaring Lion.”

Intelligence monitoring of Arabic social media has intensified since the outbreak of the current war, with the IDF Central Command and the Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District focusing efforts on online incitement and expressions of support for Iran and other enemies.

The joint effort has resulted in the arrest of 16 Palestinians who are suspected of online incitement in recent weeks, police said.

On Sunday, police announced that an Arab Israeli from the central city of Lod was arrested after expressing online support for Iranian missile attacks targeting the Jewish state and sharing locations of impact sites.

The suspect, a male in his 20s, was said to have been arrested alongside a family member after he posted the location of a missile impact on his TikTok account, writing in Arabic: “You haven’t yet seen the worst.”

Police officers, including Border Police, searched his home and seized three illegal handguns, including two converted airsoft pistols, along with substances suspected to be drugs, and thousands in cash.

In related news, officers of the Israel Border Police’s Judea and Samaria Division on Sunday arrested a terrorist in the Samaria city of Jenin, the Israel Police announced on Wednesday, sharing footage of the raid.

“Undercover operatives disguised as locals located the suspect, carried out a swift snatch operation, loaded him into their vehicle and left the area,” a police statement said.

The armed suspect was arrested and transferred for further questioning by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), the statement added.