The Israel Police has opened an investigation into a local media personality on suspicion of incitement to terrorism after he posted on social media in praise of Palestinian terrorism, the Tel Aviv District’s Fraud Division said on Wednesday.
The suspect, journalist Israel Frey, was interrogated on Wednesday morning, after which he was released without conditions, according to police.
“A Palestinian who harms an IDF soldier or a settler in the apartheid territories is not a terrorist. And it’s not a terror attack. He is a hero who struggles against an oppressor for justice, liberation and freedom,” wrote Frey in one of the posts for which he was investigated.
The incendiary posts by Frey, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, were brought to the attention of police by Shai Glick, executive director of Btsalmo, an Israeli human rights group.
“Bnei Sakhnin’s announcer is waiting for Frey,” said Glick, referring to Saeed Hassanain, stadium announcer for the Bnei Sakhnin Football Club, an Arab Israeli soccer team, who was indicted on Wednesday for identifying with Hamas and speaking against Israel and the Israel Defense Forces during an interview with Al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas channel.
Glick called for an indictment to be filed against Frey immediately, and for him to be detained until the end of legal proceedings.
“Words can kill. Anyone who writes publicly that murdering babies, women and the elderly is heroism if they are settlers is incitement to murder for all intents and purposes,” he said.
After his interrogation, Frey remained defiant. In remarks posted to X, he accused Israel of killing 17,000 Gazan children, citing Hamas numbers, blamed IDF military operations for preventing the release of the remaining 59 hostages in Gaza, charged the Israeli government with the ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Judea and Samaria and identified with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
His attorney, Gonen Ben-Itzhak, framed the investigation as an attack on freedom of speech. “Today they are trying to silence Frey, tomorrow they will silence anyone who opposes the government,” he told JNS.
Ben-Itzhak is himself a political activist and co-founder of “Crime Minister,” an anti-Benjamin Netanyahu group whose name refers to the criminal charges filed against the prime minister.
Glick told JNS that the odds an indictment will be filed against Frey are slim, given how the law is written. For a case of incitement it is necessary to show that the statements in question could lead to violent activities, he explained.
While there is an effort underway in the Knesset to change the law so as to exclude this requirement, even if it succeeds it is not clear that the change would be retroactive, he noted.
“The law is supposed to pass now, in the near future. Then it could happen. If the law doesn’t pass, there isn’t much chance [of an indictment],” Glick said.
This is not Frey’s first brush with the law over his public statements. He was briefly placed under arrest in December 2022 over social media posts supporting Palestinian terrorists.
He tweeted in September of that year his admiration for a Palestinian accused of planning a major terrorist attack in Tel Aviv.
“See what a hero is: He traveled the whole way from Nablus to Tel Aviv, and despite all the Israelis around him playing a role in oppressing, crushing and killing his people—he still looked for legitimate targets and avoided harming innocents. In a perfect world, he would get a medal,” Frey tweeted at the time.
In the aftermath of the October killing of 18-year old IDF Sgt. Noa Lazar, Frey tweeted that her blood was on the hands of the Israeli government, and reportedly said that the targeting by Palestinians of Israeli security forces did not constitute terrorism.
Tel Aviv police said at the time that Frey was arrested after ignoring numerous summonses.
Frey did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.