Israeli mother exposes Arab incitement, criminality authorities miss Arabs in Judea and Samaria take pride in Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7, often uploading videos from the slaughter, says activist Ayelet Lash. David Isaac
https://www.jns.org/israeli-mother-exposes-arab-incitement-criminality-authorities-miss/
Ayelet Lash foresaw disaster even before Oct. 7. A mother of five whose day job is teaching high school students with special needs, she moonlights as an online activist.
She’s demonstrated a knack for the role, earning several appearances on Israeli media and unwanted attention from the Israeli police.
In the last four years, police have interrogated Lash three times at the behest of the State Attorney’s Office.
She thinks the investigations were fishing expeditions in the hope of charging her with racism and incitement. Lash says the police went through countless posts of hers and challenged her on absurd items. One was a photoshopped picture of a rabbit wearing a keffiyeh. She says the fact that all the investigations were dropped shows that they could turn up nothing.
She is currently under investigation by Israel’s Civil Service Commission.
Post-Oct. 7, she started looking at the social media of her Arab neighbors in Judea and Samaria where she lives. She uncovered a cesspool of terrorist and criminal activity carried on under the noses of Israeli security forces.
Lash uncovered thieving, incitement and terrorist training with relative ease, raising the question: Where are the Israeli army, police and intelligence services?
Lash recently spoke with JNS.
Q: Do you believe there will be another Oct. 7 attack, only this time from Judea and Samaria?
A: Yes, certainly. I think that if we don’t confront our neighbors, October 7 will repeat itself. They’re arming. They’re preparing. They steal vehicles. It’s not just any vehicles, but a lot of jeeps, the type of jeeps they used on October 7. They have arms smuggled from Jordan almost every night.
Q: How would you describe yourself?
A: I’m a right-wing activist. My opinions and my ideology are right-wing. I live in Judea and Samaria. And I’ve been aware of the reality for a long time, well before October 7. For several years now, I have written that the State of Israel is heading toward a catastrophe because we are surrounded by enemies who declare their intentions towards us while we do nothing about it.
Q: What did you find when you looked at Arab social media?
A: There are lots of groups on Telegram. It can be said that almost every [Arab] village has a Telegram group. And the main topic of each village group—I mean 90% of their activity, their messages—is against the State of Israel and against Jews.
They report on Israeli army forces entering their village. They photograph IDF forces. If they see police coming, they’ll warn anyone who has a criminal matter to flee. This is how they report about our security forces.
Besides that, there are tons of incitement groups. They are very proud of October 7. They keep uploading videos from the slaughter with upbeat music. They write, “This will soon be the fate of all the Jews.” Every time an Israeli soldier is killed, they immediately post his face with an image of a foot trampling his face. They work with A.I. They use it a lot.
There are calls for murder almost every day. They encourage each other to become the next killer after every terrorist attack. They cheer the attack. This is what unites them together as a collective. They’re occupied all the time with terror.
Q: Normally, a municipal online group deals with local issues, like garbage collection and the like. You’re saying it’s all about terrorism?
A: It’s all they’re engaged in. One time, someone wanted to sell something on a group. The group manager wrote to him to erase the post. He said it didn’t belong on the group.
Q: Were you surprised by what you found online?
A: I’m not surprised at all. It was quite clear to me what the Arabs thought about us. There is this idea that there are innocent, uninvolved people there, and then you have the terrorists. But every terrorist has a supportive environment—a supportive family, a supportive community. Each time there is a terrorist who carries out an attack, the entire public praises him.
Q: Recently you’ve been posting videos of Arabs boasting about the cars they’ve stolen from Israel and offering them for sale online. They don’t bother hiding their faces. Aren’t they afraid of getting caught?
A: The fact that they do not hide only indicates that they know that no one will catch them. They are not afraid of punishment. There is no deterrence. They’re mocking us, doing what they want. They are not even ashamed to document it. It has been like this for many years. I have no doubt that as the years go by and we don’t deal with them, and we don’t fight back, their boldness is also going to increase.
Q: You posted recently regarding an Arab theft of an ATM machine that it was “terrorism in every respect.” Can you explain what the connection is between such a criminal act and terrorism?
A: For the Arabs, there are all kinds of terrorism. Their goal is to humiliate the State of Israel. And they do it in every way. They also say it and declare it. He who can murder, let him kill. He who cannot murder, then let him steal. That way they will gnaw at Israeli society.
Q: Have you shown these posts to the Israeli authorities?
A: Not in a formal way. But for a long time, they’ve been following my posts. I know that officers in the field read my posts and my tweets. They don’t like what I do much either. I was interrogated in the past.
Q: Why don’t they like what you’re doing?
A: It’s the fact that I show an Arab armed with weapons and this is someone the Shabak [the Shin Bet] should have reached before me, before I uploaded his picture. This is what I show again and again. The same people keep uploading pictures of themselves armed and walking around Israel. It’s actually an embarrassment for the Shabak. It basically proves that they’re not doing their job. They prefer people like me not to be around. But it is clear to me that they see it.
In the end, I no longer trust our security establishment to change, because I see what their efforts led to on October 7 and they haven’t woken up since. And I don’t think it’s possible to build on the security system as long as the personnel don’t change their worldview.
I hoped that after an event like October 7 happened then at least we would wake up. To my great regret, only some woke up.
That’s the reason why I easily find profiles of terrorist networks, those armed with weapons, and those who incite terrorism, and the political and security establishment doesn’t—because they still haven’t woken up.
They refuse to recognize that there is a murderous enemy here in Judea and Samaria, who wants to destroy the State of Israel. They suffer from the same [faulty] konceptzia [“governing assumption”] and don’t want to acknowledge this fact. They try to ignore it, and whitewash the story and hide it from the public.
Now my goal is to show the public in Israel the situation. To say, here are the facts. These are the enemies around us.
Q: Why is Israel’s security establishment still stuck in an Oct. 6 mindset?
A: They are prisoners of a Western worldview, which doesn’t understand the Arabic language of the enemy. The Oct. 6 mindset says the Arabs are stupid. They have no ideology. If you give them some money, they will be OK with us.
We should not give them jobs or money. By doing so, we give them hope. The Arab method is to exploit [opportunities] as much as possible.
The Oct. 6 worldview doesn’t understand that there is an ideology here and that this is a religious war. That there are people here who are not necessarily stupid, but who have a lot of faith and patience.
Q: Where does the blame for the lack of change lie? Is it the army or the government?
A: I think it’s both. Certainly, I think that the government holds a very large responsibility. Because if there is a right-wing prime minister, then he has to make sure that the officials under him are those who implement a right-wing ideology.
[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu didn’t do it all these years. He surrendered to the left, who are all in the key positions, despite the fact that the right has been in power for 13 years. This is the terrible mistake of the right, that it doesn’t know how to rule properly.
There is certainly a chutzpah on the part of the officials, the head of the Shabak, the Military Intelligence Directorate and the IDF chief of staff, who conduct their own policies without asking the government. We saw it on October 7 when they didn’t make an effort to update the prime minister.
Q: What role does the judicial system play in all this?
A: Definitely an important role. Our army is neutered, and surely great fault lies with the judicial system. It turns a blind eye to the enemy. Whoever steals cars, throws stones, collects protection money, when they’re caught, the system frees them very quickly. The legal system doesn’t allow us to fight terrorism properly. Many times, it seems as if the justice system is on the side of the Arabs, and not on the side of the Jews. We won’t be able to win like this
For 13 years, the government failed to create a balance in the judicial system.
Q: The State Attorney’s Office closed its investigations of you. What about the Civil Service Commission investigation?
A: It’s still ongoing. I have another month and a half. I have another meeting.
Q: The Civil Service Commission is investigating you because they say you’re breaking a rule that teachers are not allowed to express political opinions. Is that rule being applied correctly in your case?
A: If civil servants are not allowed to express an opinion, then a university lecturer is also not allowed to express an opinion. And we hear all the time about university lecturers who talk politics in their classrooms.
Judges, lecturers, doctors and nurses, and a lot of civil servants express their political opinions freely. None of them were arrested or taken for questioning and no cases were opened against them. But with me, yes. This is pure political persecution.
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