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Israeli Court Orders Man Accused of Leading Extremists to Be Held Israeli Court Orders Meir Kahane’s Grandson Held in Crackdown on Jewish Extremists
(about 5 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Amid politicians’ promises to crack down on Jewish terrorism suspects after the fatal firebombing of a Palestinian home on Friday, an Israeli court on Tuesday ordered held for five days a young man who the authorities contend heads a dangerous network of extremists. JERUSALEM — He has the pedigree: Meir Ettinger is the grandson and namesake of Meir Kahane, the slain American-Israeli rabbi considered the father of far-right Jewish militancy.
The man, Meir Ettinger, 23, is the grandson of Meir Kahane — the slain American-Israeli rabbi considered the father of far-right Jewish militancy — and is the author of a hate-filled blog that rails against the Israeli government and calls for the “dispossession” of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the holy land. He has the record: For years, Mr. Ettinger has joined the radical group of Israeli settlers known as the hilltop youth in clashes with Palestinians and Israeli forces, leading to a ban on his entering Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank.
Mr. Ettinger, who was arrested on Monday night, was described by Israeli news organizations as the most-wanted figure by the Jewish division of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, and in March was barred from entering the occupied West Bank for a year. He also has the ideology: In a series of Bible-quoting blog posts that amount to a manifesto, Mr. Ettinger calls for the “dispossession of gentiles” who inhabit the Holy Land and the replacement of the modern Israeli state with a new “kingdom of Israel” ruled by the laws of the Torah.
It was unclear what charges he might face, or whether he was suspected of any connection to the masked men who witnesses said set fire to two homes in the West Bank village of Duma early Friday, killing 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabshe and leaving his parents and 4-year-old brother critically burned. The Shin Bet said only that he had been “detained for his activity in an extremist Jewish organization.” “The key is not to seek to delay the explosion,” he wrote on July 22, “but to try to bring it on as soon as possible and on our own initiative.”
Several Israeli commentators said on Tuesday that they expected Mr. Ettinger to refuse to cooperate with interrogators, and to be held in administrative detention, without formal charges, a tactic Israel uses regularly against Palestinians but very rarely against Jews. Amid politicians’ promises to crack down on Jewish terrorism suspects after the fatal firebombing of a Palestinian home on Friday, Mr. Ettinger on Tuesday became the name and face of what critics call a scourge on Israeli society. An Israeli court ordered him held for five days; the police said he was accused of conspiracy, membership in an illegal organization and “other things,” including “nationalist” crimes.
Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday approved the use of administrative detention “to apprehend those responsible” for the attack in Duma and to “prevent similar attacks,” directing the security services to “take all necessary steps and to use all means at their disposal.” Gilad Erdan, the minister of internal security, said that would include “tiltul,” a Hebrew term for violently shaking a suspect, which Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled should be used only rarely, and to stop imminent violence. Shlomo Fischer, a sociologist at Hebrew University, said Mr. Ettinger was representative of a band of “violent activists” who “conceive of themselves as having a sort of charismatic, prophetic authority.” He likened it to the Jewish underground that plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock in the 1980s.
“Any method is kosher,” Mr. Erdan said on Israel Radio on Monday. “Anything that is done when it comes to Palestinian terrorists, the same thing should be done when it comes to a Jewish terrorist.” “He doesn’t accept the validity of Israeli law, he doesn’t accept the validity of civic morality — all the restraining factors are weakened or gone,” Professor Fischer, who is also a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, said in an interview. “When some religious, political ideal is violated, they believe that if they act as a spring to correct it or respond to it, then they have religious validity, they are duty-bound to act. Whatever it takes to correct the situation.”
Yuval Zemer, Mr. Ettinger’s lawyer, said his client was a victim of overreach by political leaders and security officials who were eager to make a strong statement after an attack that was condemned around the world. It was unclear whether Mr. Ettinger was suspected of any connection to the masked men who witnesses said set fire to two homes in the West Bank village of Duma early Friday, killing 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh and leaving his parents and 4-year-old brother critically injured. That attack has been condemned worldwide and across the political spectrum in Israel, where the security cabinet on Sunday directed law enforcement agents to “take all necessary steps and to use all means at their disposal” to apprehend the arsonists and “prevent similar attacks.”
“No urgent reason to arrest him arose yesterday,” Mr. Zemer said on Army Radio, “except for a desire to show, ‘We are doing something, we are arresting.’ And of course, what could be better than the No. 1 person of interest.” The cabinet specifically endorsed administrative detention — holding suspects for months without formal charges — a tactic used widely against Palestinians but rarely against Jews.
In a July 29 announcement of charges against two Jewish extremists in connection with an arson attack on June 18 at a church where Jesus is said to have performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the Shin Bet referred to Mr. Ettinger, though not by name, as the leader of a network that had been operating since 2013. The agency said he had earlier been banned from the West Bank and Jerusalem “given the danger he poses.” A notable exception was Mr. Ettinger’s grandfather, in a 1980 case involving a cache of ammunition found in a Jerusalem yeshiva. Many Israeli analysts expect Mr. Ettinger to soon follow in those footsteps — a stark sign of the shift in Israel’s approach, since an earlier request to hold him in administrative detention was rejected by the judicial authorities.
Israeli news organizations have reported that Mr. Ettinger was active for at least five years in the so-called hilltop youth, a radical — and ragtag — group of settlers that have been accused of vandalism and violence against Palestinians and their property. He spent six months in jail after trying to disrupt the Israeli military’s evacuation of illegal settlement outposts, these reports said, and broke into Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus after being barred from the contested site. “Any method is kosher,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security, even “tiltul,” a Hebrew term for violent shaking suspects in interrogations, which Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled is allowed only in rare cases, to prevent imminent violence. “Anything that is done when it comes to Palestinian terrorists, the same thing should be done when it comes to a Jewish terrorist.”
Last year, Mr. Ettinger was among a group of 18 settlers held for hours by Palestinian residents of Qusra after a clash amid the village’s olive trees that included rock throwing. Mr. Ettinger’s lawyer, Yuval Zemer, denounced the detention of his client as overreach by political leaders under pressure to take harsh action and by security officials eager to flex their new muscles, after years of facing harsh criticism for lenient treatment of Jewish extremists.
Mr. Ettinger denied in a blog post last Wednesday, the day of the arrests in the church arson and less than two days before the attack in Duma, that he was the head of any group. “No urgent reason to arrest him arose yesterday,” Mr. Zemer said on Army Radio, “except for a desire to show, ‘We are doing something, we are arresting,’ and of course, what could be better than the No. 1 person of interest.”
The Shin Bet “understands that all of these acts they are chasing after do not grow from an ‘organization,’ ” he wrote, “but rather from the grounds and from the most simple and basic understandings, which drive people to feel like they need to act, to do something,” Mr. Zemer told Israeli reporters at the court hearing that investigators dealing with Mr. Ettinger had been “shaking and punching him, even though this is against regulations.”
“Truth must be told,” he added. “There is no terrorist organization, but there are many, many Jews, many more than they might think, who hold on to a scale of values that is totally different than those of the Supreme Court or the Shin Bet.” Mr. Ettinger, who the authorities said was 23 or 24, wears the long side locks of the ultra-Orthodox and the large, knitted skullcap of the hilltop youth, whose slogans include “Kahane was right.” Mr. Ettinger has been described in Israeli news reports as the most-wanted man for the Jewish division of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency.
Last week, the agency said that he was the leader of a new, shadowy network that had been operating since 2013 and that he had been barred since March from the West Bank and Jerusalem “because of the danger he poses.”
In announcing arrests of two members of this network for the June 18 burning of a church in Israel’s Galilee region, where Jesus is said to have performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the Shin Bet said the group promotes “an extremist ideology that aspires to change the regime and bring about the redemption via various stages of actions.”
Mr. Ettinger’s father, Mordechai, is a rabbi affiliated with two Jerusalem yeshivas, one of which, Ateret Cohanim, buys properties in Arab areas for Jewish settlement. His mother, Tova — Meir Kahane’s daughter — said on Tuesday, “I know you want to interview about my son and I’m really not interested in speaking,” then hung up the phone.
In 2011, according to Israeli news reports, Mr. Ettinger was part of a group that broke into Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus. He later moved to Migron, an illegal outpost evacuated by court order in 2012, and served months in jail in connection with a spying operation at the radical settlement Yitzhar that tried to disrupt Israeli military evacuations of such outposts.
Last year, he was among 18 settlers held for hours by Palestinians in the village of Qusra after a confrontation in nearby olive orchards, an episode he described as a defeat in a video interview published on Hakol Hayehudi — The Jewish Voice — a website that has faced its own trouble with the Israeli authorities. The police raided the site’s offices in 2011, and last year the attorney general issued a rare indictment against two of its founders for incitement and racism.
“One can lose the battle and win the war,” Mr. Ettinger said in the interview. “We have to carry on, because God is with us.”
Mr. Ettinger, who now lives in the northern city of Safed, has since at least March been writing regular missives on Hakol Hayehudi that condemn Israel’s government, courts, rabbis and security forces, invoke divine authority for actions to protect settlements and denounce local churches and monasteries as “idolatry.”
Of the fire at the Galilee church attributed to his network by the Shin Bet, Mr. Ettinger wrote approvingly: “I don’t know what those anonymous lighters intended to set alight, but that fire touched my heart.”
On July 5, after a string of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, he said that a sense that the army could not protect Jews “can lead people with hot and sensitive hearts to private acts of retaliation.”
After the Shin Bet’s accusation that he led a new extremist network, Mr. Ettinger wrote that “there is no terror organization, but there are many, many Jews, many more than they might think, who hold onto a scale of values that is totally different than those of the Supreme Court or the Shin Bet.”
His latest post appeared Tuesday at 2:43 p.m., while he was in detention. It raged against the outcry over Duma as a “terrorist attack on Judaism and Jewish values,” lambasted President Reuven Rivlin’s outreach to Arabs and said the Shin Bet’s crackdown “is encouraging an escalation by Jews.”
“We have strong, sturdy ropes,” he wrote, “that give us the strength to face all the imaginary walls and smoke screens and to say without fear what a Jewish state is.”