An anti-Israel website that offered a $100,000 reward for the murder of senior Israeli academics was taken down on Friday after receiving blowback on social media.
The Punishment For Justice Movement called the academics “criminals and collaborators with the occupation army” as well as “distributors of weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli army.” It claimed they are “involved in the murder of Palestinian children.”
The website also offered a $1,000 reward for those who place protest signs in front of the academics’ homes, and $20,000 for setting their cars ablaze.
Other academics, including students, were named on the website, according to the Times of Israel, each with $50,000 bounties placed for their deaths.
Among the dozens of academics listed on the site as “special targets” were Shikma Bressler, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and Ben Gurion University of the Negev President Danny Chamovitz.
Chamovitz, who has reigned over the university since 2019, said he was “mostly worried about the extremist discourse that encourages violence,” according to the Times of Israel.
The webpage “invite[d] all unofficial military groups, armed groups and fighters to join the movement to confront these criminals and benefit from the rewards of punishing these victims and killers while trying to defend human rights and help the oppressed children of Gaza.”
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Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, along with the Shin Bet security service, reportedly launched an investigation into the matter. Officials suspect that Iran is behind the website.
The Committee of Research Universities, which sits under the Council for Higher Education in Israel, called it “a dangerous and horrific escalation” in a press release.
