Man Arrested After Escalating Threats Condemning Support for Israel

A Jordanian citizen living in Orlando was charged with vandalizing storefronts, smashing solar panels and threatening to use explosives during a spree of escalating attacks targeting people and businesses he believed supported Israel, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, 43, is accused of engaging in several nighttime attacks on property that resulted in no injuries and that began in June, according to documents unsealed in the Middle District of Florida. But he appeared to be progressing toward bigger targets with potentially deadly results.

Prosecutors said Mr. Hnaihen, who wore a mask to conceal his identity, began by breaking the glass front doors of local businesses. Soon after, he broke into a solar power generation facility in Wedgefield, Fla., where he smashed panels, cut wires and busted electronic equipment — causing about $700,000 in damage.

At each site, he left behind several “warning letters,” directed at the U.S. government with demands, culminating in a threat to “destroy or explode everything here in whole America” — especially “companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel,” he wrote, according to the filing.

The charges come as law enforcement officials have voiced heightened concern about terrorist attacks by individuals or groups spurred by Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mr. Hnaihen was arrested on July 11 — two days after employees at an industrial propane gas depot in Orlando found a menacing letter he had posted outside the facility. No one was hurt, but operations at the facility were disrupted while a fire department hazmat team searched for explosives or other dangerous materials.

Mr. Hnaihen is charged with four counts of threatening to use explosives and one