Israel Charges Teen with ‘Social Media Incitement’

Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem's old city. (Photo: File)

Israel charged a Palestinian minor with “incitement” for posts on social media, police said yesterday.

Israeli police spokesperson Luba Al-Samri said in a statement that two young residents of occupied East Jerusalem had been detained for maintaining a Facebook page called “Bahaa Elayyan news”, named after a Palestinian who was killed by Israeli forces last year after allegedly carrying out a shooting and stabbing attack. The page had been running for two weeks.

One of the two youths, who Al-Samri said was 15 years old, was charged with incitement to violence and terrorism.

The other was still being interrogated, Al-Samri added, stating that a 32-year-old Palestinian resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal Al-Mukabbir had also been detained in the case.

In the past year, Israel has detained scores of Palestinians, including journalists, for social media activity, alleging that a wave of unrest that swept the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2015 was encouraged largely by “incitement”.

Palestinians have instead pointed chiefly to the frustration and despair brought on by Israel’s nearly 50-year military occupation of the Palestinian territory and the absence of a political horizon.

(MEMO, PC, Social Media)

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