Israel: who will stop the wave of online terror

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Israel: a wave of online terror

In recent weeks, a series of deadly terrorist attacks have been carried out by Palestinians aged 13-14. Israeli analysts say that this is a new phenomenon – not “lone terror”, but the terror of social networks, “network terror”.

they all have one thing in common: they are all fueled by the toxic social media machine. The terrorist who carried out the latest attack at the Shuafat checkpoint is already a “hero of the refugee camp,” while the one who fired at the City of David wrote: “Either victory or I will be a martyr.”

Their profile is complex and it's almost impossible to guess their intentions, but all recent terrorists, teenagers and children, have taken inspiration from social media, which has become a platform for spreading hate.

Mohammad Zalbani, the terrorist who carried out the latest attack at the Shuafat checkpoint and whose detention yesterday was extended until Sunday, a seventh-grade student. In the Shuafat camp, they said that he was a normal, ordinary child, there was no history of violence in his past, and that his family insisted that he was not involved in the attack. After the attack, videos of Zalbani with the caption “camp hero” were uploaded to social media.

Another 13-year-old terrorist, Muhammad Aliwat of Silwan, carried out a shooting attack in the City of David in late January. He used an old pistol he took from home. In the past, he wrote in his school notebook, “Either victory or shahada. Forgive me mom, you will be proud of me. His brother Omar said after the attack that “my brother is a little boy, it makes no sense for him to kill people.”

In a television program on a local channel in Nablus, young people were asked about the shaheeds who influenced them, and most talked about their admiration for the Lion's Den group led by Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a social media star whose chains and T-shirts are from their symbols are sold in Palestinian camps and cities. The Zabeidi family of the Jenin refugee camp, Alqam Khairi (who carried out the attack in Neve Yaakov that killed seven people) and Odai Tamimi (who carried out the attack that killed Noa Lazar at the Shuafat checkpoint) were also inspirations for Palestinian youth who wants to be like them.

This week, another brother from the Zabeidi family, Jibril, was arrested on suspicion of being behind the kidnapping of the body of Druze youth Tiran Piro in Jenin, and yesterday A video appeared on TikTok with a call to give this family – which includes martyrs and prisoners – the “keys to Palestine”.

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