Shimon, incidentally, noted on several occasions during his interrogations that the defendant chose this target to carry out the acts because he intended to "harm." Thus, in response to the question: "... But, what did he tell you about this area?" He wants to damage her name, he doesn't know what, he (???) glass he told me, but I didn't understand it as if we would do it" (transcript of the interrogation of November 19, 2023, P/69A, page 13, lines 338-339). The same is true in response to the question: "What does he need for the gasoline?" But I didn't believe he would do it. I thought he was just laughing at me..." (Transcript of the interrogation dated November 19, 2023, P/69A, page 23, lines 587-589). Moreover, in the context of the confrontation between Shimon and the defendant on November 19, 2023, when Shimon was asked in the presence of the defendant, "Why did you and Haim fill a bottle of gasoline at a gas station on October 9, 2023? Why did you fill up the gasoline?" Shimon replied: "He wanted to hurt... Throwing at vehicles... Beers with fuel" (P/29B, page 13, lines 344-356).
According to the defendant's counsel, during his interrogations with the police, the interrogator inserted the words "terrorist" and "harm" into Shimon according to him, which he repeated frequently in his questions. However, given that Shimon used the word "attack" more than once, on his own initiative, and in response to questions in which the term "attack" was not used in all its inflections, I find that weight should be attributed to Shimon's choice of words and its meaning.
Shimon's descriptions of the defendant's plan to "harm," particularly in the context of the choice of the target for the commission of the acts, strengthen the conclusion that the motive that led the defendant to commit the acts was indeed nationalist-ideological.
- Indeed, in the other charges, the defendant threw Molotov cocktails that were not motivated by nationalist or ideological motives, and at "institutional" targets that do not have an Arab identity, and are located in Jewish neighborhoods - a post office, banks and the Magistrate's Court.
However, in the absence of any other plausible explanation for the meaning of throwing Molotov cocktails at selected targets in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and even in view of the proximity of the acts to the Simchat Torah attack on October 7, I do not get the impression that this refutes the impression that the Molotov cocktail throwing in the first charge was carried out with a nationalist-ideological motive, even if his actions were later directed at other targets as well.