‘Hero’, ‘king’, ‘righteous’: Israelis hail professor accused of plotting to massacre Palestinians

Social media users in Israel praised and justified an Israeli professor accused of plotting to massacre hundreds of Palestinians, according to an analysis of thousands of comments under news reports of his indictment, published by the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine.

The analysis, by political activist and software engineer Fadi Shabita, examined reactions to the case of Shahar Nevo, a 59-year-old mathematics professor at Bar-Ilan University. Israeli prosecutors charged him last month with preparing a terrorist attack, blackmail and obstruction of justice. 

According to the indictment, Nevo spent more than three years planning to recruit 72 Jewish attackers, organised into 12 armed cells, to carry out simultaneous attacks on Palestinian communities inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank. He allegedly estimated that between 600 and 700 people would be killed, and he aimed to drive the survivors to flee to Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan. Prosecutors say his planning document explicitly called for “mass killing” and told participants to show no mercy “even to the women and their children”.

The plot came to light after Nevo approached Moshe Feiglin, a far-right former Likud lawmaker, who refused to join. Nevo was arrested on 17 September and indicted on 5 October, and he has reportedly admitted the allegations.

Shabita analysed 2,482 comments and replies under an Instagram post by the Israeli news site Mako, published two days after the indictment. Roughly half of the top-level comments praised or justified Nevo, and these attracted about 70 per cent of all likes on the comments. The most-liked comment, with more than 5,100 likes, suggested Nevo should be honoured at Israel’s Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony. 

READ: Israeli math professor charged with plotting to kill hundreds of Arabs, force mass expulsions

Other popular comments called Nevo a hero, a “king” or a “tzaddik”, a Hebrew term for a righteous person, and some said the plot should have succeeded. Only about one in six top-level comments condemned the plot, and these received about 12 per cent of likes.

Commenters justified the alleged plot by citing 7 October and a Talmudic principle of self-defence, while others declared that “there are no innocents”. Some called for Palestinians to be expelled or “annihilated”, and others offered Arabs “a bus out of the country or a bullet in the head”. Palestinians were labelled “Arabushim”, a racist slur, or likened to Amalek, the biblical enemy whose destruction Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invoked during the genocide in Gaza.

The analysis links these comments to a wider shift in Israeli society. It cites a March 2025 poll of 1,005 Jewish Israelis, carried out by sociologist Tamir Sorek with the Geocartography Knowledge Group. The poll found that 82 per cent supported expelling Gaza’s population, up from 45 per cent in a 2003 survey, and 56 per cent supported expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

The poll also found that 47 per cent agreed the army should kill everyone in a conquered enemy city, as in the biblical story of Jericho. The article also notes that Israeli rights groups documented more than 50 statements on Channel 14 calling for or supporting genocide in Gaza.

Palestinian commenters tagged the Israel Police account to ask whether the posts amounted to criminal incitement. Shabita contrasts the lack of action on such calls with the policing of Palestinian speech. He cites Knesset research data showing that Arabs were the subjects of 97 per cent of investigations over incitement between 2018 and 2022.

Freedom of information data obtained by the legal rights centre Adalah shows that, after 7 October, Arabs accounted for 100 per cent of such cases in the Northern District and 95 per cent elsewhere. Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested over social media posts as innocuous as a flag emoji or a religious phrase. The singer Dalal Abu Amneh was placed under house arrest and barred from discussing the war for 45 days.

OPINION: The slaughter of Palestinian scholars in Gaza is a deliberate Israeli tactic