The State Prosecutor's Office on Monday filed an indictment with the Lod District Court against a mathematics lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, a man in his 60s from Petah Tikva, for allegedly planning a large-scale attack aimed at killing hundreds of Arabs.
A gag order currently prohibits publication of the defendant's name.
The indictment charges the lecturer with preparing to carry out a terror attack under Israel's Counter-Terrorism Law, extortion by threats, and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors are seeking to keep him in custody until the end of the legal proceedings.
According to the indictment, against the backdrop of the 2021 Guardian of the Walls riots and, more intensely, following the outbreak of the Iron Swords War, the defendant developed an ideological-nationalist plan he called "Ayt - A Nation Will Carry Out Transfer."
Prosecutors allege that for more than three years, from February 2023 until his arrest about two weeks ago, he developed the plan in detail and took concrete preparatory steps, including conducting reconnaissance missions, writing detailed documents and attempting to recruit people to take part in the attack.
Under the plan, 72 Jewish attackers, including the defendant himself, were supposed to be divided into 12 six-person cells and carry out simultaneous attacks in mixed cities and Arab communities across Israel. According to the indictment, the defendant planned for the cells to arm themselves with various weapons and strike by surprise.
The plan also allegedly included an effort to recruit members of the IDF who could provide assistance for the attack. The defendant's ultimate goal, prosecutors allege, was to create mass-casualty events that would lead Israeli Arabs and Palestinians to flee eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and leave Israel.
In documents he prepared, the defendant also drafted instructions for carrying out the plan, including calls to seize areas of friction, roads and entrances to Arab communities and mixed cities. In one document, according to the indictment, he wrote: "Do not have mercy even on the women and children."
Prosecutors allege that the defendant did not stop at writing the plan. For about a year and a half, he attempted unsuccessfully to recruit supporters and partners, and even conducted reconnaissance near the Arab town of Tuba-Zangariyye to examine possible routes of access and attack.
A central part of the indictment concerns the defendant's efforts to reach Moshe Feiglin, who is running in the upcoming elections as part of the joint slate of Zehut and the Religious Zionism Party.
According to the indictment, the defendant planned to persuade Feiglin to join the plan and help him recruit additional activists. Under the scheme he devised, preselected activists were supposed to be invited to a Zehut campaign event, where they would be told that they had been recruited for an attack scheduled to take place the following day.
The defendant attended two public events featuring Feiglin and attempted to arrange a meeting with him and deliver a summary of the plan. However, prosecutors emphasize that Feiglin did not respond to any of his approaches.
According to the indictment, after his attempts failed and as the elections approached, the defendant sent Feiglin a letter threatening that if he did not cooperate and help advance the plan, he would publish the letter in a manner that, in the defendant's view, would cause Feiglin public damage.
He went to Feiglin's home and gave the letter to a neighbor to pass it on to him. He later attended a Zehut event at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda Market and gave additional copies to the party's director-general through another woman.
According to prosecutors, throughout the period the defendant took a series of measures intended to conceal his activities. Among other things, he wrote his documents by hand rather than on a computer, used a false name, attended meetings wearing a mask, hat and sunglasses, and used the phones of passersby to contact people he was attempting to recruit.
In its request to keep him in custody, the prosecution argued that the defendant had developed the plan over several years based on an "extreme and murderous ideology," and that his actions and attempts to advance it demonstrate a clear and immediate danger.