TerrorismIsrael places Jewish extremists in administrative detention for six months without charge
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.
Extremist being taken into custody // Source: commons.wikimedia.com
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.
