Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “zero tolerance” for Jewish terrorism following two deadly attacks by extremists.
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She had been in critical condition since being stabbed in the back by a suspect, Yishai Shlissel, who carried out the attack just weeks after being released from a 10-year prison sentence for stabbing participants in the 2005 march. The teenage girl later died.
On Monday Israel said it could use harsh interrogation methods to tackle violent Jewish extremism, after the death of the Palestinian infant.
The domestic intelligence service named him as Meir Ettinger, a grandson of Meir Kahane, a rabbi who founded the anti-Arab movement Kach and was assassinated in 1990 in New York.
The legal system and law enforcement agencies have grappled with loosely organized violent Jewish extremists as attacks became bolder over the years.
Last week, Haaretz reported that the Shin Bet accused Ettinger of leading an underground group responsible for the arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes in June, a charge Ettinger denied on his blog. “We decry it as a terrorist crime”, Netanyahu said afterward.
Of course, the statement is accurate, and if these words were uttered by anyone other than the “Chief Negotiator” of the Palestinian Authority (PA), one could have taken them seriously.
A case in point is Israeli army reserve Major-General Gershon Hacohen who is sympathetically profiled by The Times of Israel as “one of the most interesting figures to come out of the army in recent years”.
The tougher rules follow attacks on a church, a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem and the the arson murder of 18-month-old Palestinian baby Ali Dawabsha last week, all believed to have been perpetrated by Jewish extremists. That is exactly what the government wanted – its reaction was a PR ploy to portray Israel as the good guy, one that fights terrorism and is a victim of it.
Palestinian children are often targeted by Israeli soldiers and by settler terrorists as a means of punishing Palestinians and pressuring them to flee the land which Israel continues to seek to steal.
Already, use of administrative detention is fairly widespread as an exceptional, highly anti-democratic measure to stop what is euphemistically referred to as “price tag” attacks against Palestinians and their property throughout the West Bank.
The PA can not exist without Israeli support, as Israel’s military Occupation and illegal settlement expansion can not be sustained without the security arm of the PA, which has suppressed any serious resistance to Israel in the West Bank. He moved to the northern city of Safed, a hub for Jewish religious mystics.
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The extension to Israelis of so-called “administration detention”, a practice commonly applied to Palestinian militant suspects and condemned internationally, laid bare authorities’ frustration at failing to curb Jewish ultra-nationalist attacks. COGAT, the defense body that handles civilian issues with the Palestinians, said the demolition was coordinated with the settlers and there were no protests.
