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By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A Petah Tikva history and civics teacher was arrested Friday on suspicion of supporting Hamas after writing numerous posts online justifying their massacre on October 7 of 1,200 people including the elderly and infants as legitimate “resistance.”
Dr. Meir Baruchin (62), who was summarily fired from his job, had written in a teacher’s forum, “An occupied nation is allowed to do anything that is needed in order to succeed in its struggle.”
In apparent response to Israel’s video evidence of Hamas terrorists raping dozens of women and girls before murdering them during their surprise assault in over 20 Gaza envelope communities, Baruchin also falsely accused the IDF of doing the same in a seeming attempt to mitigate their crimes.
“Israeli soldiers didn’t rape Palestinians? They have since 1948, and this doesn’t make it into the textbooks,” he wrote separately.
The police have charged him with “revealing a decision to commit treason” after receiving a complaint by the Ministry of Education and the Petah Tikva municipality. This is a more serious charge than supporting terrorism, and is punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment.
The suspect, they said, “published statements against the State of Israel that aid terrorism and give it legitimacy to commit atrocities…. He published false and harsh statements that justify terror acts and terrorism and the actions of the enemy during wartime.”
The Jerusalem resident has a history of justifying terrorism. This year, he wrote that a person who had deliberately rammed his car into a crowd “ran over six people but he is not a terrorist.” Baruchin also sided with and encouraged violence against police officers and soldiers and eulogized terrorists while whitewashing their crimes, the police said.
In 2020, he called for his students in a Rishon Lezion school to refuse army service in order to “be on the right side of history,” and publicly charged that air force pilots attacking terror targets in Gaza were “baby killers.”
After parents complained, he was reportedly offered a deal to terminate his employment in exchange for excellent retirement conditions, while signing that he will not teach again in the city.
The teacher’s arrest has been extended until at least Monday while the police investigation continues.
The police reported last week that they have charged 48 suspects so far for incitement to violence and terrorism since the war began.
