Israel has expanded its crackdown on Jewish terrorists and their supporters, placing two high-profile extremists in administrative detention for six months – that is, jailing them for six months without charge — and arrested more than a dozen other extremists in West Bank settlement. About two dozen extremists from different West Bank settlements were taken into police stations and their finger prints, DNA, and other identifying markers collected before they were released. They are suspected of being part of the extremist movement, and if they take part in violent actions against Palestinians it would easier for forensic experts to determine whether or not they were on the scene. Following the 31 July arson attack by extremist settlers on a Palestinian family in the village of Duma – the extremists blocked the doors to the house from the outside to make sure the family of four would burn alive – the Israeli government voted to designate Jewish settlers’ violence as terrorism, allowing the security services and police to take steps to combat the extremists which would otherwise not be permitted.
Israel has expanded its crackdown on Jewish terrorists and their supporters, placing two high-profile extremists in administrative detention for six months – that is, jailing them for six months without charge — and arrested more than a dozen other extremists in West Bank settlement.
The Israeli police and courts had typically treated acts of terrorism and violence perpetrated by Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories against Palestinians without the urgency and determination directed at Palestinian terrorism, but over the past three or four years there has been a noticeable escalation in violence by extremist Jewish settlers. These violent extremists now destroy not only Palestinian property, but they have begun to take action aiming to kill Palestinians in the Palestinian territories, destroy Mosques and churches in the territories and inside Israel, attack Israeli Arabs, and threaten Israeli Jews who do not agree with them.
Given a patina of religious legitimacy by a few extremist and racist rabbis, some of those behind the new wave of violent settlers extremism openly call for the dismantling of Israeli democratic institutions and replacing them with a Taliban-like (Jewish) religious state in which Muslims and Christians would have no rights (that is, if they are even allowed to stay in the new state).
The movement, calling itself “The Revolt,” wants to establish a Jewish kingdom based on the laws of the Torah. Non-Jews are to be expelled, the Third Temple is to be built, and religious observance is to be enforced, initially in public spaces.
“The starting point of the Revolt is that the State of Israel has no right to exist, and therefore we are not bound by the rules of the game,” anonymous authors of The Revolt’s manifesto of sedition wrote. Portions of the manifesto were posted online (see “Israel mulls designating Jewish extremists as ‘terrorists’,” HSNW, 3 August 2015).
“They want the Messiah to come, to bring back the Kingdom of Israel, like in the days of King David, to rebuild the temple and to drive out all idolaters, meaning Muslims and Christians,” said Lior Akerman, a former Shin Bet officer, told the New York Times.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has been warning for a few years that treating the intensifying settlers’ violence with kids’ gloves would only lead to more – and more dangerous – violence, but politicians vying for the vote of the West Bank settlers and their supporters in Israel have blocked efforts to designate settlers’ violence against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as terrorism, and without that designation the hands of the security services and the police in taking action against the extremists were tied.
All that changed on 31 July when extremist Jewish settlers threw a Molotov cocktail into the home of a family in the village of Duma in the West Bank. To make sure the family would burn alive, the extremists blocked the doors to the house from the outside, preventing the four family members, who were awakened by the fire, from escaping. An 18-month toddler and his father were killed. The toddler’s 4-year old brother and their mother are in critical condition in the burn unit of an Israeli hospital, fighting for their lives.
The New York Times reports that Israeli authorities described the arson attack on 31 July as an act of “Jewish terrorism,” and that Israel’s security cabinet approved the use of tough measures to tackle an increasing problem. Among the measures approved was administrative detention, which allows suspects to be held for lengthy periods without charge. Administrative detentions have mostly been used against Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism, but rarely against Israelis.
Meir Ettinger, grandson of the late U.S.-born racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Eviatar Slonim, another Jewish extremist, were on Sunday placed under administrative detention for their suspected involvement in an extremist Jewish organization, Israel’s Defense Ministry said.
Another suspected Jewish extremist, Mordechai Meyer, was placed under six-month administrative detention last week.
Dvir Kariv, a former Shin Bet official, said that sometimes there was no choice but to use administrative detention, for example, “when there is intelligence that proves involvement of this or that person in a terror action, but use of this intelligence in a court will expose the source of the information.”
Administrative detention, however, “in this context is a Band-Aid, not an antibiotic,” Kariv told Israel Radio on Sunday. He called for harsher sentencing by the courts, and deeper engagement of educators and social welfare services.
About two dozen extremists from different West Bank settlements were taken into police stations and their finger prints, DNA, and other identifying markers collected before they were released. They are suspected of being part of the extremist movement, and if they take part in violent actions against Palestinians it would easier for forensic experts to determine whether or not they were on the scene.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has accused Ettinger of leading an extremist Jewish movement which encouraged attacks on Palestinian property and Christian holy sites, including an arson attack on 18 June on a church near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel that marks the site of a New Testament story about the miracle of the loaves and fish.
Four other young Israelis were arrested in connection with the arson attack, but only two are going to stand trial. The other three were released.
The extremist settlers view churches and Mosques – and the presence of Christians and Muslims – in Israel and the West Bank as violating the “purity” of the Holy Land.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20150810-israel-places-jewish-extremists-in-administrative-detention-for-six-months-without-charge?page=0,1
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