Israel’s State Attorney’s Office on Sunday indicted former MK Dr. Michael Ben Ari of incitement to racism due to statements he wrote against Arab terrorism. The indictment was submitted with the approval of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

The indictment comes after six years in which Ben Ari, who founded Otzma Yehudit, was interrogated for statements and posts on social media in which he denounced Arab terrorism, including chillingly prescient statements predicting the October 7th massacre.

Ben Ari wrote in 2018: “Gaza is a roadside bomb that will explode on us… it’s 64 kilometers of border. They’re seeking to enter the yishuvim…Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, Be’eri, Alumim, Ein Shlosha, Re’im. The Arabs will burn their fields, try to burn their houses. They dream of coming and murdering them.”

This exact quote was part of the investigative material.

Another quote in the investigative material was a statement he made in response to Arabs in Shuafat celebrating a teror attack in which several Jews were killed. “A murderous nation!” he said. The court deemed it as another example of “incitement to racism.”

Another statement deemed “incitement to racism” was Ben Ari’s words after the levaya of Tamir Avichai, H”Yd, a father of six murdered in a terror attack. Ben-Ari wrote: “They’ll continue to tell us that it was a lone attacker… this is a nation that is arising to eliminate us, to destroy us. They say it explicitly.”

Dr. Michael Ben Ari stated in response to the indictment: “The State Attorney’s Office has been pursuing me for six years, since June 2018, and now there is finally an indictment. I’m going to frame the indictment and hang it in my study. This indictment proves how much I warned and said again and again – a fire, a fire that is going to burn us all. What did they do to me in response? They persecuted me, disqualified me from running for the Knesset, they claimed that there was a ‘critical mass of evidence’ to prove that I was supposedly a racist. I warned about Operation Guardian of the Walls, I warned about the October 7th massacre – all these materials are in the indictment against me.”

Attorney Tzion Amir said: “The indictment is unfounded and we will wage a determined legal battle to prove that this is not incitement but an attempt to silence Rabbi Michael Ben Ari, who, like every citizen, has the right to freedom of speech and expression of an opinion. One must wonder why precisely these days and on the background of serious incitement to harm elected officials, they decided to file an indictment many years after launching the investigation.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “The indictment filed by the Attorney-General against Dr. Michael Ben Ari is another mark of disgrace for her, one of many. She didn’t file an indictment against MK Ahmad Tibi who claimed that Hamas is a legitimate organization, nor against MK Ayman Odeh, who praised Hezbollah, but filed an indictment against Dr. Ben Ari, a great Oheiv Yisrael whose children are now fighting in the IDF.”

“You don’t have to agree with Ben Ari to understand that this is political persecution by the same Attorney-General who heads a prosecutor’s office that wants to open a criminal investigation against me for ‘incitement against the residents of Gaza,’ and who ordered an investigation against heroes who fought the Nukhba terrorists on October 7th.”

Minister Betzalel Smotrich said: “At the same time that the Attorney-General takes zero action against the Arab Knesset members who support Hamas and refuse to condemn the massacre, she decides to prosecute Dr. Michael Ben Ari only because he predicted October 7th before it happened. A moral and Jewish disgrace.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)