Israel mulls designating Jewish extremists as “terrorists”

In the last three or four years, however, in what the extremists call “Price Tag” attacks, these Jewish terrorists have also begun to destroy mosques and churches, leaving behind their tell-tale signatures: graffiti on the walls of burnt-out mosques and churches, which read: “Price Tag,” “Revenge,” and “Messiah will come.”

In addition to attacks on Muslim and Christian religious buildings, the Price Tag actions have also targeted Israeli Arabs in villages and towns in Israel.

On Friday, the extremists went a step-further: they threw Molotov cocktails into the home of a family of four in the Palestinian village of Duma, killing a toddler and severely injuring the toddler’s sister and her father and mother. All three are in critical condition in an Israeli hospital.

To make sure the family would be killed in the attack, the Jewish terrorists blocked the doors to the house from the outside, so the family would not be able to escape and instead burn alive inside.

This is not the first time extremist Jewish settlers have tried to burn Palestinian families by burning their homes at night – this was the fourteenth such attack in three years – but in the earlier attacks the residents were able to escape the burning house.

On 2 July 2104, three religious supporters of the settlers, who wanted to avenge the killing of three Jewish yeshiva students by Hamas terrorists, grabbed Muhammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year old Palestinian, off the street on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, and burnt him alive.

There were other incidents of settlers shooting and killing Palestinians, but in Israel there is a feeling that a line has been crossed last Friday in Duma. This is especially the case since the Jewish Section of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has concluded that the attack on the Palestinian family at Duma heralds a new phase in the settlers’ conflict with Israeli law and authorities.

It appears that within the 25,000 hard-core of extremist Jewish settlers, there is an even harder core, numbering a few dozens and led by Meir Etinger, the grandson of the racist Rabbi Meir Kahana, who was killed twenty-five years ago.

This group of fanatics calls themselves “The Rebellion,” and their goal appears to be the dismantling of Israel’s democratic political system and its replacement by a Taliban-like religious state (albeit, a Jewish Taliban state).

The Israeli security services have been efficient and effective in tackling Palestinian terrorism, but they have been much less effective in monitoring Jewish terrorism, preventing it, and capturing the culprits after acts of terror have been committed. In fact, the capture – and, soon, trial – of the two fanatics who recently burnt down the historic Church of Loaves and Fish near the Sea of Galilee – is the first time that extremist arsonists will face consequences for burning a church or a Mosque. Those who burned other churches and Mosques in Israel and the West Bank over the past three years are yet to be identified and bought to trial.

The main reason for the relative impunity with which the Jewish terrorists operate is that successive Israeli governments have rejected requests by the police and security services to designate violence by Jewish extremist settlers against Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Israeli Jews as terrorism. This designation still applies only to Palestinian violence against Jews.

The designation has legal and practical law-enforcement implications. Terrorism suspects, for example, can be detained for a few months in administrative detention to prevent them from committing acts of terrorism, or allow the security services to collect evidence against them. They can be made to wear electronic ankle-bracelets so their movements may be monitored.

They can also be interrogated in a more robust fashion.

The fact that Jewish extremist violence has not been designated as terrorism, and the nature of the fanatics’ society and culture, have thus hampered the security services’ ability to monitor would-be Jewish terrorists, prevent acts of terrorism, and capture the culprits of acts committed.

Etinger, who has been barred from entering the West Bank and now lives in Safed in northern Israel, has been publishing a blog in which he has openly outlined the goals his followers are pursuing.

Haaretz quotes a few passages from recent blogs, in which Etinger writes, for example, that “there are many, many Jews, more than what people think, whose values are completely different from the values of [Israel’s] Supreme Court or the Shin Bet, and the laws which govern them [those many Jews] are not the laws of the state… but laws which are much more eternal.”

In his blog postings, Etinger also explains the reasons behind attacks on Christian churches. Writing about settlers protesting the destruction by the Israeli government of illegal structures built in West Bank settlements, Etinger writes that, “To the important protest over the Land of Israel there should be added a real protest against the profound sin of the State of Israel in allowing foreign [non-Jewish] worship, and many churches and monasteries, in the Land of Israel, the sound of the bell ringing of which is mingling with the soothing voice of the Torah and prayer of which, fortunately, there is much in the Holy Land.”

“The ‘common bond’ [among Jews] requires that everyone be enlisted not to forget the detainees [the two who burnt down the Church of Loaves and Fish] who sit in jail for us, and only to intensify the protest over the violation of God by the State of Israel permitting, funding, and helping foreign worship in the Holy Land.”

The escalation of the violence by the extremist religious settlers against Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Israeli Jews is forcing the Israeli government to make a decision about the designation of the perpetrators of this violence that successive governments have so far avoided making. The right-wing coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu may be especially uncomfortable making this decision because it may alienate the many settlers who are not violent – and who support the government — but who would not like to see fellow settlers designated as terrorists. The extremists, however, may be forcing the Israeli government’s hand.