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Israeli Arrested For Instigating Beating of Arabs

Used social media to call for assaults, one of which was caught on camera

by
Batya Ungar-Sargon
May 22, 2014
(Shutterstock)
(Shutterstock)

Until last week, Chaim Gamliel was just a guy with a mission: keeping Arab men from dating Jewish women. Armed with nothing more than a Facebook page, a few WhatsApp groups, and the pseudonym “Yossi Cohen,” the 24-year-old vigilante would post instructions to his group “Jews Against Assimilation.” With racial purity as his guiding light, Gamliel took it upon himself to have the group’s members report on mixed couples. He would then share the information and encourage others to attack those named.

He was finally taken seriously by a group of three boys, aged 16 and 17, who attacked an Arab clerk in Jerusalem under Gamliel’s instructions, Arutz Sheva reports. The three were caught on camera beating the clerk, and were arrested last week. They have been charged with racial crimes and attacks.

The arrest of the teenage perpetrators led to the arrest and indictment of Gamliel for conspiracy to commit a crime.

In another Facebook post, Walla reports, Gamliel tried to encourage “catfishing”—creating fake profiles to deliberately engage and mislead other people online. He wrote: “I’ll tell you something, and I don’t care if you publicize it— only without my name of course because it’s a criminal offense. So it’s like this: We are a group of very right guys who hate the fact that Arabs hunt Jewish girls so we opened Facebook user name in the name of a Jewish girl who is very beautiful and attractive. Indeed she is very attractive, she attracts tons and tons of Arabs, and makes up to meet them somewhere. These terrorists arrive, and besides a beating they do not get anything. Continue what you do, you are righteous.”

Batya Ungar-Sargon is a freelance writer who lives in New York. Her Twitter feed is @bungarsargon.