The Lod District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday that it had convicted a teenage member of a Jewish terror cell responsible for targeting Palestinians and their property in the central West Bank from 2013 to 2016.

The suspect, whose identity was not released as he was a minor at the time of the attacks, operated in the group with three brothers, who were convicted in March as part of a plea agreement.

Deeming his actions to be particularly reprehensible, prosecutors tried and convicted the latest suspect separately, without offering a plea deal. The conviction was handed down last week, but was only made public by the court Tuesday.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Over his involvement in nine different attacks, the court on Thursday found the 19-year-old guilty of 25 charges, including membership in a terror organization, racially motivated aggravated assault, racially motivated property destruction, stone throwing at vehicles and arson.

This was just the second time that a Jewish suspect had ever been convicted of membership in a terror organization over the perpetration of so-called price tag attacks — assaults carried out by far-right Jewish extremists against Palestinians and their property ostensibly in retaliation for actions and policies against the settlement enterprise.

One of the three brothers, a teen, was also convicted of membership in a terror organization in March.

The three brothers, from the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Nahliel, were sentenced last year to five, four and-a-half and two and-a-half years respectively.

The teen suspect convicted last week, who hails from a different settlement in the central West Bank, is expected to receive a heftier punishment. Sentencing is not expected until June.

According to the ruling, the suspect and his co-conspirators “sought, among other things, to instill fear and panic among the Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria [West Bank], and to convey a message to the security forces and to the public in Israel regarding security issues.”

In the middle of the night in December 2015, the suspect and another descended on the village of Beitillu. There, they shattered a window of a home they knew to be occupied on the outskirts of the central West Bank village and hurled a pair of smoke grenades inside before fleeing the scene. According to the ruling, the Palestinian father heard the glass shatter, managed to wake up his wife and nine-month old baby and got them out of the home before it filled entirely with smoke. On the walls of a house nearby the attackers sprayed “Revenge, regards from the prisoners of Zion.”

In a second incident a month earlier, the two Israeli teens threw Molotov cocktails into a house in the village of Mazra’a al-Qibliya while a Palestinian family was sleeping inside. One of the firebombs bounced off the window of the home, thus a disaster was averted. On the walls of the home they sprayed “Revenge,” “Death to the Arabs,” and “Jews wake up.”

A month earlier, the suspect along with three other members of the terror cell hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles near Ramallah and torched another in Beitillu as retaliation for the murder of the Israeli couple Na’ama and Eitam Henkin.

In June 2015, the suspect along with five others brutally assaulted a Palestinian farmer on the outskirts of the village of Ras Karkar.

The Shin Bet security service arrested the terror cell in April 2016, but conditionally released the teens pending sentencing.

“The affair illustrates that the law enforcement authorities are working with full determination to eliminate acts of violence that constitute acts of terrorism on a clearly nationalistic background,” said attorneys Dan Cohen and Reut Aviri, who handled the case on behalf of the Central District Attorney’s Office.

Hay Haber from the Honenu legal aid organization representing the suspect rejected the notion that his client was a member of a terror organization. “This is a baseless accusation filled with demagoguery. To put my client in the same class as a Hamas fighter is not just erroneous at the legal level, but at the factual level as well.”

Haber said his client has expressed remorse for his actions and was being unfairly used as a “pilot case” in the court’s attempt to demonstrate that it is cracking down on cases of violence perpetrated by Jews. </s> An Israeli-American convicted of making more than 2,000 threats against US Jewish institutions, airlines, police stations and even a professional basketball team's plane was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday by an Israeli court.

The 20-year-old's bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States sparked fears of a rise in anti-Semitism in the country. Some of the offences were committed when he was a minor, the ruling said.

Israeli courts have not identified the accused because he was tried as a minor. But he has also been indicted in the United States and US authorities have identified him as Michael Ron David Kadar.

His lawyer argued that he may not have been aware of the severity of his actions because he had a brain tumour and was autistic.

The judge in the case acknowledged he was autistic, "but has a high IQ and understands his deeds very well," the ruling said.

"If not for his medical condition, the defendant would have received a much longer sentence," said the ruling from the Tel Aviv district court for youth.

The court said he called some 2,000 institutions between April 2015 and March 2017, including schools, malls, police stations, hospitals and Jewish institutions.

He also used email to make threats, it said, and threatened that "an act of terror was going to take place in their location." </s> American-Israeli Jewish teenager Michael Kadar, seen here after a March 23, 2017 hearing, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by an Israeli court after being convicted of making more than 2,000 threats against US Jewish and other institutions

An Israeli-American convicted of making more than 2,000 threats against US Jewish institutions, airlines, police stations and even a professional basketball team's plane was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday by an Israeli court.

The 20-year-old's bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States sparked fears of a rise in anti-Semitism in the country. Some of the offences were committed when he was a minor, the ruling said.

Israeli courts have not identified the accused because he was tried as a minor. But he has also been indicted in the United States and US authorities have identified him as Michael Ron David Kadar.

His lawyer argued that he may not have been aware of the severity of his actions because he had a brain tumour and was autistic.

The judge in the case acknowledged he was autistic, "but has a high IQ and understands his deeds very well," the ruling said.

"If not for his medical condition, the defendant would have received a much longer sentence," said the ruling from the Tel Aviv district court for youth.

The court said he called some 2,000 institutions between April 2015 and March 2017, including schools, malls, police stations, hospitals and Jewish institutions.

He also used email to make threats, it said, and threatened that "an act of terror was going to take place in their location."

American-Israeli Jewish teenager Michael Kadar, seen here after a March 23, 2017 hearing, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by an Israeli court after being convicted of making more than 2,000 threats against US Jewish and other institutions </s> An Israeli-American convicted of making more than 2,000 threats against US Jewish institutions, airlines, police stations and even a professional basketball team's plane was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday by an Israeli court.

The 20-year-old's bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States sparked fears of a rise in anti-Semitism in the country. Some of the offences were committed when he was a minor, the court ruled.

Israeli courts have not identified the accused because he was tried as a minor. But he has also been indicted in the United States and US authorities have named him as Michael Ron David Kadar.

His lawyer argued that he may not have been aware of the severity of his actions because he had a brain tumour and was autistic.

The judge in the case acknowledged he was autistic, "but has a high IQ and understands his deeds very well," the ruling said.

"If not for his medical condition, the defendant would have received a much longer sentence," said the ruling from the Tel Aviv district youth court.

The court said he called some 2,000 institutions between April 2015 and March 2017, including schools, malls, police stations, hospitals and Jewish institutions.

He also used email to make threats, it said, and indicated that "an act of terror was going to take place in their location."

Kadar, who is Jewish and from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, was arrested in March 2017 after the wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States.

The threats accompanied fears that hate crimes and anti-Semitic acts could be on the increase.

Rhetoric that accompanied Donald Trump's rise to president was seen by many as encouraging the extreme right and emboldening hate groups.

The arrest of a Jewish teenager over the phone and email threats complicated the debate.

Beyond the threats to Jewish institutions, Kadar was suspected of making a hoax bomb call to Delta Airlines, forcing an emergency landing, and another against an El Al flight over Switzerland.

Swiss and French warplanes were scrambled to escort the Israeli plane and prepare to shoot it down if it became clear it was going to crash into a Swiss city.

Kadar was also convicted of making similar threats against flights over New Zealand and Australia.

Others were against a plane flying the Boston Celtics US basketball team to a game and against Delaware state senator Ernesto Lopez.

He used technology to distort his voice and hide his identity.

In addition, Kadar was accused of attacking and wounding a police officer while in custody and instructing people online on making poison and bombs. Authorities said he was also in possession of child pornography.

"The court recognised the damage and panic the defendant caused many people around the world with his actions," Yoni Haddad of the state attorney's cyber division said in a statement after the sentencing.

"The defendant committed his felonies with sophistication, using fake identities and with the aim of terrorising the public." </s> Michael Kadar, an American-Israeli man convicted of terrorizing Jewish community centers across the U.S. with a wave of bogus bomb threats, was sentenced by a court in Tel Aviv to 10 years in prison Thursday.

Unidentified by Israeli media outlets on account of starting his crime spree while still a minor, the dual citizen was found guilty in June in connection with placing thousands of threatening phone calls against various victims in the U.S. and abroad between 2015 and 2017, including airports, airlines, schools and Jewish community centers.

Israeli outlets described the so-called “JCC hoax bomber” as the same person previously charged with related crimes by the U.S. Department of Justice, consequently revealing his identity as Kadar.

The Justice Department charged Kadar, 20, last year with dozens of counts connected to a wave of threatening calls placed against U.S. victims prior to his March 2017 arrest, and prosecutors subsequently filed federal hate crimes charges against him in Feb. 2018.

The dual citizen issued more than 2,000 threats prior to his arrest, according to the Israeli State Prosecutor’s office, and the U.S. Justice Department has previously identified his targets as Jewish centers in at least three states, as well as the Orlando International Airport, the Anti-Defamation League’s headquarters and the Israeli Embassy in D.C., among other targets.

“When individuals target victims of their crimes based on who they are, what they believe, or how they worship, they target the bedrock principles on which our nation was founded,” former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement issued when the Justice Department announced the hate crime charges against Kadar.

Discussing the crimes during Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Zvi Gurfinkel described the impact the bogus bomb threats had on victims flying aboard airlines targeted by his threats.

“One can easily imagine the terror, the fear and the horror that gripped the airplane passengers who were forced to make an emergency landing, some of whom were injured while evacuating the plane and the terrified panic caused when there was a need to evacuate pupils from schools because of fake bomb threats,” he wrote in his verdict, The New York Times reported.

Kadar did not deny responsibility during trial, instead blaming his actions on his autism, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

“Were it not for his condition, I would have sentenced him to 17 years in prison,” Judge Gurfinkel ruled Thursday, according to JWire, a Jewish news service that covered the case.

“This is the most cruel, cruel thing in the world,” Kadar’s mother said of the sentencing, The New York Times reported. “I’m very sorry, but I am ashamed that the country acts this way.”

Representatives for the Justice Department did not immediately comment on the sentence. </s> (JTA) — A 20-year-old American-Israeli man convicted of making hundreds of bomb threats to Jewish community centers and Jewish schools in the United States and five other countries, as well as to airlines, was sentenced to ten years in prison in Israel.

The sentence for Michael Kadar, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and whose name is barred from publication in Israel, was delivered on Thursday in Tel Aviv District Court. Kadar was convicted on several counts including extortion, conspiracy to commit a crime, money laundering and assaulting a police officer

The sentence was delivered despite testimony by defense psychologists that he is autistic and incompetent.

Judge Tzvi Gurfinkel said that despite his medical conditions, Kadar was responsible for his actions and understood the difference between right and wrong. The judge noted that had Kadar not been autistic he would have sentenced him to 17 years.

Kadar has admitted to making some 2,000 fake bomb threat calls to hospitals, airlines, schools and various Jewish institutions in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Britain.

The hoax threats to the JCCs and other Jewish institutions in the first three months of 2017 forced widespread evacuations and raised fears of a resurgence in anti-Semitism. Kadar’s parents and lawyer have not disputed his involvement in the bomb threats but asserted in his defense that he has a brain tumor and a low IQ.

Earlier this year it was revealed that Kadar managed to make another 100 hoax bomb threats to schools in Israel from prison.

Kadar was charged in Israel in April 2017 with thousands of counts on offenses that include publishing false information, causing panic, computer hacking and money laundering. He had been arrested in Israel the previous month in a joint operation with the FBI.

In March, the U.S. Justice Department indicted Kadar on federal hate crimes charges. </s> A delivery driver who harboured “chilling fantasies” about killing members of Tottenham’s Jewish community and attacking White Hart Lane, has jailed for attempting to join Islamic State.

Somalian Aweys Shikhey, 38, dreamed of travelling to take part in violent jihad after moving to Tottenham, north London.

He talked about killing former prime minister David Cameron and the “old woman Elizabeth”, as well as shooting Jewish people and launching an AK47 attack at White Hart Lane, then-home to Tottenham Hotspur football club.

Get The Jewish News Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

He kept up a veneer of hard-working respectability, sending money to his families abroad while applying for loans to bankroll his trip to IS territory. But in an online chat, he fell in love with a jihadi bride in Norway and discussed committing atrocities in the UK with a fellow Somali living in Kenya.

He was found guilty of preparing terrorist acts on or before May 23 last year following a trial at the Old Bailey in February, and Judge Martin Edmunds QC jailed him for eight years with a further four years on extended licence.

He told the defendant: “In travelling you were abandoning your two families, one in Holland and one in Kenya, behind. “On the surface you appeared to be a hard-working man, regularly sending money to your families. But under the surface you were increasingly radicalised.

“During your conversations with Abdirahman Hassan in Kenya you had discussions about the murder of David Cameron and Her Majesty the Queen and about committing atrocities against football fans and members of the Jewish community in the Tottenham area.

“These conversations although chilling, dangerous and testament to your increasing radicalisation were in my judgment more in the nature of fantasy than conspiracy.

“I am not sentencing you, indeed cannot sentence you, on this charge, for threatened acts of terrorism in this country.”

He added: “Given the scope of your ambition, including your fantasies about the commission of very grave terrorist acts in the UK, and your hatred for those who do not share your views, I have no hesitation in finding you to be dangerous within the meaning of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.”

The court had heard how the IS fan tried to raise money for his trip by applying for various loans, securing £10,000 from Barclays for a “wedding”, jurors were told.

Listen to the Jewish Views Podcast

Shikhey was arrested at Stansted airport in May last year before boarding a flight to Istanbul, with an onward route planned into IS-held territory. His terrorist mindset was revealed in encrypted chat with fellow Somali Hassan on Threema and Telegram.

Hassan’s computer had been examined after he was arrested for alleged terrorism offences in September 2016.

Shikhey told Hassan three or five people were needed to “carry out a bloody attack” and it would be best to find AK47s and other automatic weapons.

In reference to White Hart Lane, home to Tottenham Hotspur football club, he added: “They could have been taken to Stamford Hill and when people leave from their game.” </s> VIENNA — An Austrian court has convicted a 19-year-old of involvement in plans for two Islamic extremist attacks in Germany, one of which was supposed to be carried out by a 12-year-old boy.

The Austria Press Agency reported that the defendant was convicted Friday in Vienna of attempted incitement to murder as a terrorist crime. He was given a nine-year sentence.

The Austrian of Albanian descent was accused of trying to incite a 12-year-old to attack a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen in 2016, and plotting an attack on the United States’ Ramstein Air Base along with a 16-year-old girl.

Defence lawyer Wolfgang Blaschitz said he is considering appealing.

The defendant testified he became a supporter of the Islamic State group following a previous jail term for robbery. He denied ordering any attacks. </s> An American-Israeli man was sentenced to 10 years prison by a Tel Aviv court on Thursday after being convicted of making thousands of bomb threats against Jewish centers and other venues in the US and elsewhere.

Michael Ron David Kadar, 20, wasn't named in the Israeli court due to his offenses occurring when he was under 18, but he has been previously identified in an indictment in the US.



He was arrested in March 2017 on suspicion of calling in threats to flights, schools, and public and religious buildings in the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

He used sophisticated online tools to phone in threats, often by disguising his voice as a woman's. He also advertised his services for payment on the dark web, receiving tens of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin.

Kadar was suspected of criminal misdeeds dating as far back as 2015, when a call was made to New York City's JFK airport, prompting the grounding of Delta flights due to false threats that there were explosives around and inside the airport.

By the time of his arrest in March last year, BuzzFeed News tallied that more than 100 threats had been made to Jewish community centers and schools around the US since the start of 2017.

“One can easily imagine the terror, the fear and the horror that gripped the airplane passengers who were forced to make an emergency landing, some of whom were injured while evacuating the plane,” Judge Zvi Gurfinkel wrote in a verdict obtained by the New York Times, “and the terrified panic caused when there was a need to evacuate pupils from schools because of fake bomb threats.”



Kadar's parents argued he was not legally competent because of a brain tumor that caused autism, the BBC reported, but the judge still declared Kadar "has a high IQ and understands his deeds very well".

In the US, Kadar is accused of making bomb threats and active shooter threats to numerous Jewish Community Centers throughout Florida in early 2017. Nothing was detonated and no one was hurt in connection with any of the threats.

According to the US criminal complaint, between Jan. 4 and Mar. 7 2017, Kadar made 245 threatening calls to organizations around the US that targeted JCCs, other historical Jewish institutions, and offices of a prominent Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League.

It was not immediately clear if he will be extradited to the US to face trial once his Israeli prison sentence ends.
A Jewish Israeli teen is convicted of membership of a terror organisation, arson, and racially aggravated assault. He is the second Jewish person convicted of terror group membership ever in Israel in connection to crimes against Palestinians. His conviction was announced today, but occurred last week in secrecy.