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Israeli prosecutors have charged a mathematics professor at Bar-Ilan University with preparing a terrorist attack, blackmail and obstruction of justice over an alleged plan to kill hundreds of Arab citizens and drive thousands more to Jordan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported.
The State Prosecutor’s Office said the suspect, whose identity is subject to a gag order, developed what it described as a “thorough and detailed” plan over nearly three years and sought help from “subversive elements” in the air force, artillery and armored corps, The Times of Israel reported.
The professor, who is about 60, was arrested on September 17 and has admitted to the charges, prosecutors said. The indictment alleges he spent the previous 18 months trying to recruit participants and seeking a “significant political figure” to help enlist armed people.
He eventually approached former Likud lawmaker Moshe Feiglin, whose Zehut faction joined forces with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party ahead of the October 27 election, the newspaper reported. Prosecutors said that after Feiglin did not respond, the professor tried about a month ago to blackmail him into joining the plan.
A court filing said Feiglin, his deputy Yitzhak Hai Zaga and Zehut executive director Shai Malka later gave police threatening letters they had received from the suspect. Prosecutors said he also used methods intended to conceal the plan and hinder its discovery.
Indictment describes planned attacks on Arab communities
The professor allegedly called the plan “Ayit”, Hebrew for “eagle”, and also an acronym for a phrase meaning “the nation will carry out transfer”, a reference to the expulsion of Palestinians. He began developing it in February 2023, following protests in mixed Arab-Jewish cities in 2021, according to The Times of Israel.
In March 2023, he obtained aerial photographs of Tuba-Zangariyye, a Bedouin town in northern Israel, and visited the area several times to identify potential routes for entering and carrying out an attack, the indictment says. He also prepared a 20-page document for recruits, copies of which he kept at home and in his university office.
The plan called for 72 armed Jewish attackers, divided into 12 groups of six, to attack Arab population centres simultaneously with firearms and axes, with support from sympathetic members of the military. It estimated that 600 to 700 people would be killed and said at least half of the attackers, including the professor, should have gun licences.
The document also called for women and children to be targeted and for the attacks to be broadcast live on social media to encourage Arabs to leave Israel and the occupied West Bank. It envisaged calling on soldiers, police officers, Israeli occupiers and criminals to join after the attacks began.
The indictment says the professor planned to gather 71 other participants at an event organised by a candidate in the 2026 election, presenting it as a campaign gathering, with the attacks to take place the next day. Around June, he asked his daughter to recruit acquaintances among the so-called “hilltop youth”, a term for extremist Israeli occupiers in the West Bank, but she refused.
The Central District Attorney’s Office filed the indictment at Lod District Court and asked for the professor to remain in custody until the proceedings conclude. Bar-Ilan University said it was “shocked” by the charges and suspended him pending the outcome of the legal process.
Arab Israelis account for about 21% of Israel’s population of more than 10 million.
