Israeli jailed for 18 months for incitement to kill Arabs

An Israeli court yesterday sentenced a Jewish man to 18 months in prison for incitement to kill Arabs, reported Haaretz.

Shlomi Avraham, 42, from Arad, was convicted “for publishing inflammatory content against Arabs” in the summer of 2014, in the context of the killings of three settler students in the occupied West Bank and Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

In March, Avraham was convicted of “writing 12 Facebook posts inciting to violence and 27 inciting to racism, including calls to abduct and murder Arabs”, on a Facebook page called “Knufiyat Al Yahud” (the Jewish Gang).

Avraham also received an eight-month suspended sentence, reported Haaretz.

The ruling cited one post that read: “They’re murdering our brothers, raping our sisters. We’re tired of keeping quiet. The hillltop youth are over. The settlers are over. The price tag is over. We’re the next name: Knufiyat Al Hayud.”

One of the posts leading to Avraham’s conviction “was made after the abduction and murder of Abu Khdeir”, the newspaper reported.

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In another post, Avraham counted Arab and Jewish fatalities, writing: “They’ve started. We’ll continue and end the campaign. And meanwhile 1:3 today will be 3:9 for the Jewish people. The Al Yahud gang is on the roads.”

According to Haaretz, Avraham’s defence lawyer “said he plans to appeal the court decision, and the judge agreed to delay implementation until early November, subject to payment of a high bail.”

Sixteen-year-old Palestinian Abu Khdeir was kidnapped by two unnamed minors and Yosef  Ben-David in 2015 then burnt alive. Ben-David was handed a life sentence and 20 years in jail and ordered to pay 150,000 Israeli shekels ($39,630) to Abu Khdeir’s family and 20,000 Israeli shekels ($5,284) to the family of another seven-year-old Palestinian child that he attempted to kidnap in Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina.