JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities kicked off a promised crackdown on Jewish extremists following last week’s deadly arson attack on a Palestinian family, arresting a high-profile activist accused of leading a new movement of defiant settler youths who embrace violence and reject the rule of law in the name of the purity of the Holy Land.
Meir Ettinger, whose arrest Monday was extended in court Tuesday, is the grandson of U.S.-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, Israel’s most notorious Jewish extremist, whose ultranationalist party was banned from Israel’s parliament for its racist views in 1988 and who was killed by an Arab gunman in New York in 1990.
According to the Shin Bet security agency, the 23-year-old Ettinger was arrested for “involvement in an extremist Jewish organization.” The agency would not say if he is also suspected in the July 31 arson attack, but it has accused Ettinger of heading an extremist movement seeking to bring about religious “redemption” through attacks on Christian sites and Palestinian homes.
Ettinger, in a large skullcap, scruffy beard and sidelocks, smiled at the swarm of news crews before his hearing. In a July 30 blog post before his arrest, he denied the Shin Bet’s accusation that he leads an extremist group.
“There is no terror organization, but there are many, many Jews, many more than people think, whose value system is completely different than that of the Israeli Supreme Court or the Shin Bet,” Ettinger wrote. “The laws they are bound by are not the State’s laws … but laws that are much more eternal and real.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “zero tolerance” for Jewish terrorism following two deadly attacks by extremists. The attack that killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and severely injured his parents and 4-year-old brother in the West Bank came a day after an anti-gay ultra-Orthodox man stabbed a 16-year-old Israeli girl during a rampage against marchers at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. The girl later died of her wounds.
Authorities are expected to crack down much harder on suspected Jewish extremist cells, particularly among West Bank settler youths.
“I have heard from the fringes of our society that there are those who say there is a supreme law above the country’s laws. I wish to clarify that there is no law above the country’s laws,” Netanyahu said Tuesday. “Whoever breaks them, whoever champions hate crimes, whoever carries out violence, whoever carries out terror, we will act against them with all the weight of the law.”
Israeli media have dubbed Ettinger the Shin Bet’s “No. 1” most-wanted Jewish extremist. He has been arrested several times before and banned from the West Bank. His lawyer, Yuval Zemer, told Israel’s Army Radio that authorities arrested his client to appease an Israeli public outraged by the arson attack.
