5 Arabs arrested for Temple Mount incitement

Israeli forces arrested five Arabs for inciting terror, with social media implicated in the crimes.

State Prosecutors filed indictments on Monday in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court against five Arab residents of Jerusalem for incitement to terrorism.

The suspects, including one minor, are charged with promoting terrorism, calling on others to carry out terror attacks, and other crimes.

The prosecutor’s office said three of the accused used Facebook to call on Arabs to attack Israelis following the murder of two Israeli policemen at the Temple Mount compound on July 14.

Mohammed Makhaimer, 19 of Anata, is accused of calling repeatedly for attacks on Israeli civilians and members of the security forces, beginning in September 2014. He is also accused of praising and supporting terror groups, including Hamas’ military wing, Izz ad Din al Qassam, as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Spokespeople for the Jerusalem Police said that following the Temple Mount attack, Makhaimer wrote on Facebook that “[Israel] thought the heroes [i.e. Palestinian terrorists] had grown old, but they were still alive and they took them down in the alleyways and at the gates [to the Temple Mount],” and added a hashtag reading “Friday Belongs to Martyrs.”

Another suspect, 21-year-old Seif Abu-Juma’a of the a-Tur neighborhood in Jerusalem, is accused of praising the double murder on Facebook and calling for other attacks.

“With stones, knives, axes and Molotov cocktails, we attack spontaneously and I don’t mean from a-Tur,” Abu-Juma’a wrote. “Three martyrs came from Umm el-Fahm… we are following you. We grew up on the ethos of holy martyrs.”

Two other men, 26-year-old Sufian Mahmoud of Isawiyya and 23-year-old Muhamad Shemaasna from Shuafat, and an unnamed 17-year-old male, were charged with similar crimes.

Police said that prosecutors have asked the court to extend the group’s remand until court proceedings have been completed.

By: TPS