1 sept 2015
The rate of the annual migration of Brazilian Jews to Israel is expected to considerably increase during the current year, according to Haaretz newspaper.
On average, somewhere between 200 and 250 Jews of Brazilian origin move to Israel every year, but this year, the number could reach 500, according to Gladis Berezowski, the director of immigrant absorption at Beit Brasil society,
Beit Brasil is a recently established non-profit group that helps new Jewish arrivals from Brazil.
Currently, the number of Brazilian Jews living in Israel is estimated at about 12,000.
On average, somewhere between 200 and 250 Jews of Brazilian origin move to Israel every year, but this year, the number could reach 500, according to Gladis Berezowski, the director of immigrant absorption at Beit Brasil society,
Beit Brasil is a recently established non-profit group that helps new Jewish arrivals from Brazil.
Currently, the number of Brazilian Jews living in Israel is estimated at about 12,000.
The Ateret Cohanim association at dawn Tuesday seized a Palestinian residential home in Jerusalem’s town of Silwan, to the south of Muslims’ holy al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center said in a statement a horde of Israeli vandals smashed the entrance gates of the evacuated house of the Palestinian citizen Jihad Sarhan.
Earlier, on Thursday, an adjacent 13-story building was seized by Israeli settlers in the area.
Violent clashes broke out in Batn al-Hawa neighborhood after the settlers misappropriated the home.
Dozens of Palestinian protesters sustained wounds after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked them with random spates of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
Three youngsters were kidnapped during the clashes that burst out in the area.
Earlier overnight Monday, clashes burst out after the IOF stormed Ein al-Lawza in Silwan and attacked the unarmed Palestinian protesters with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
The Palestinian youths responded to the attack by throwing stones at the heavily-armed occupation soldiers.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center said in a statement a horde of Israeli vandals smashed the entrance gates of the evacuated house of the Palestinian citizen Jihad Sarhan.
Earlier, on Thursday, an adjacent 13-story building was seized by Israeli settlers in the area.
Violent clashes broke out in Batn al-Hawa neighborhood after the settlers misappropriated the home.
Dozens of Palestinian protesters sustained wounds after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked them with random spates of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
Three youngsters were kidnapped during the clashes that burst out in the area.
Earlier overnight Monday, clashes burst out after the IOF stormed Ein al-Lawza in Silwan and attacked the unarmed Palestinian protesters with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
The Palestinian youths responded to the attack by throwing stones at the heavily-armed occupation soldiers.
A group of Israeli settlers stormed Tuesday morning al-Aqsa Mosque via the Israeli-controlled Magaribeh Gate under heavy police protection.
The settlers carried out a series of provocative acts in the courtyards of the holy shrine, while Palestinian worshipers responded by chanting Takbeer.
Israeli police, for its part, confiscated the identity cards of some worshipers mainly minors and women at the entrances to the mosque.
Extremist Israeli settlers and officials have been violating the sanctity of the holy Mosque on an almost daily basis and always under the protection of armed occupation forces, which often attack Palestinian worshipers who try to protect their holy site.
The settlers carried out a series of provocative acts in the courtyards of the holy shrine, while Palestinian worshipers responded by chanting Takbeer.
Israeli police, for its part, confiscated the identity cards of some worshipers mainly minors and women at the entrances to the mosque.
Extremist Israeli settlers and officials have been violating the sanctity of the holy Mosque on an almost daily basis and always under the protection of armed occupation forces, which often attack Palestinian worshipers who try to protect their holy site.
The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) decided to close the Ibrahimi Mosque, in the West Bank city of al-Khalil, before Muslim worshipers for six days during September under pretext of the advent of Jewish holidays.
The IOA informed the Palestinian endowments authority Tuesday of its decision to close the Ibrahimi Mosque before Muslim worshipers for six days to allow the free access of Jewish settlers into the holy premises on the occasion of the Jewish holidays.
The move makes part of a larger judaization plan aimed at wiping out the sacred and Islamic character of the Occupied Palestinian territories and chaining up Muslims’ religious freedom.
Since the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshipers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque by the extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, the IOA had repeatedly closed the complex off to Muslim worshipers ahead of Jewish holidays.
The IOA informed the Palestinian endowments authority Tuesday of its decision to close the Ibrahimi Mosque before Muslim worshipers for six days to allow the free access of Jewish settlers into the holy premises on the occasion of the Jewish holidays.
The move makes part of a larger judaization plan aimed at wiping out the sacred and Islamic character of the Occupied Palestinian territories and chaining up Muslims’ religious freedom.
Since the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshipers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque by the extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, the IOA had repeatedly closed the complex off to Muslim worshipers ahead of Jewish holidays.
31 aug 2015
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are suffering from the rising Judaization and settlement schemes which expose the Israeli occupation and the settler gangs' malicious intent. These schemes don't only threaten the Palestinian citizens, but also their houses, their holy sites, and everything related to the Palestinians' lives.
In this report, the PIC sheds light on the settlement file and the statistics of competent authorities and settlement experts who affirmed that the settlers and their extremist groups' crimes committed against the Palestinians, their properties, and sanctities have been steadily increasing.
Shocking statistics
According to the latest statistics issued by the Popular Committee against Wall and Settlement, the settlement areas in the West Banl reached about 505 including settlements, settlement outposts, military outposts, services areas, and industrial and touristic sites, let alone the 93 houses which have been misappropriated partially or completely in Jerusalem.
16% of these settlement areas are in Jerusalem and Ramallah, 13% in al-Khalil and Jericho, and 12% are in Qalqilya.
Settlers' assaults
The Committee's statistics indicated that the settlers have escalated their assaults against the Palestinian citizens; in 2013 about 550 violations by Israeli settlers were reported, in 2014 the assaults were more than 760 while since the beginning of 2015 until end of August the assaults have reached 400.
The committee also pointed out that in 2014 the settlers' assaults in the West Bank governorates reached about 887 cases. Nablus took the lion's share of these violations, followed by al-Khalil and Jerusalem.
These violent attacks included beating up, running over, hurling stones, attacking Palestinian properties, kidnap attempts, shooting, breaking into houses, releasing gas and chemical materials, stabbing, burning homes, burning houses of worship, and even burning Palestinian citizens to death.
Even the trees and the farms were not spared the settlers' assaults; they burn and cut trees, attack the farmers, prevent water from reaching the farms, and unleash dangerous animals in the Palestinian agricultural lands.
The committee drew attention to the fact that over the past few years the settlers' assaults were limited to direct attacks against Palestinian citizens or against their trees and crops whereas today the systematic attacks, which are openly supported and protected by the Israeli army, extended to include the Palestinian lands, tress, houses, and mosques.
For his part, Suhail Khaliliyya, from the Applied Research Institute-ARIJ in Bethlehem, pointed to the noticeable increase in the settlers’ number which coincides with a similar increase in the settlement construction during the recent years.
According to the institute, the number of the settlement outposts has remarkably increased during the last years and the settlements have been expanded at the expense of the Palestinian lands.
The institute reviewed aerial photos that show that the number of the settlement blocs has increased by about a million square meters compared to the years 2012 and 2014.
Khaliliyya affirmed that the Israeli occupation pursues a systematic policy to expand the settlement construction in an attempt to impose new facts on the ground and force the Palestinians to exchange their lands that are located in areas desired by the Israelis.
Official support
The researcher stressed that the Israeli government supports the settlers' crimes, contrary to what it claims in the media, and clarified that when the Dawabsha family house was burned the Israeli army reached the scene very quickly which indicates that the army knew about the arson attack beforehand.
He warned that this will boost the settlers' persistence in carrying out these heinous systematic attacks especially that the Israeli parties always side with the settlers in their crimes against Palestinian innocent civilians.
The researcher, however, affirmed that the settlers' indulgence in committing crimes against Palestinian citizens will never weaken the Palestinians' steadfastness and adherence to their land.
In this report, the PIC sheds light on the settlement file and the statistics of competent authorities and settlement experts who affirmed that the settlers and their extremist groups' crimes committed against the Palestinians, their properties, and sanctities have been steadily increasing.
Shocking statistics
According to the latest statistics issued by the Popular Committee against Wall and Settlement, the settlement areas in the West Banl reached about 505 including settlements, settlement outposts, military outposts, services areas, and industrial and touristic sites, let alone the 93 houses which have been misappropriated partially or completely in Jerusalem.
16% of these settlement areas are in Jerusalem and Ramallah, 13% in al-Khalil and Jericho, and 12% are in Qalqilya.
Settlers' assaults
The Committee's statistics indicated that the settlers have escalated their assaults against the Palestinian citizens; in 2013 about 550 violations by Israeli settlers were reported, in 2014 the assaults were more than 760 while since the beginning of 2015 until end of August the assaults have reached 400.
The committee also pointed out that in 2014 the settlers' assaults in the West Bank governorates reached about 887 cases. Nablus took the lion's share of these violations, followed by al-Khalil and Jerusalem.
These violent attacks included beating up, running over, hurling stones, attacking Palestinian properties, kidnap attempts, shooting, breaking into houses, releasing gas and chemical materials, stabbing, burning homes, burning houses of worship, and even burning Palestinian citizens to death.
Even the trees and the farms were not spared the settlers' assaults; they burn and cut trees, attack the farmers, prevent water from reaching the farms, and unleash dangerous animals in the Palestinian agricultural lands.
The committee drew attention to the fact that over the past few years the settlers' assaults were limited to direct attacks against Palestinian citizens or against their trees and crops whereas today the systematic attacks, which are openly supported and protected by the Israeli army, extended to include the Palestinian lands, tress, houses, and mosques.
For his part, Suhail Khaliliyya, from the Applied Research Institute-ARIJ in Bethlehem, pointed to the noticeable increase in the settlers’ number which coincides with a similar increase in the settlement construction during the recent years.
According to the institute, the number of the settlement outposts has remarkably increased during the last years and the settlements have been expanded at the expense of the Palestinian lands.
The institute reviewed aerial photos that show that the number of the settlement blocs has increased by about a million square meters compared to the years 2012 and 2014.
Khaliliyya affirmed that the Israeli occupation pursues a systematic policy to expand the settlement construction in an attempt to impose new facts on the ground and force the Palestinians to exchange their lands that are located in areas desired by the Israelis.
Official support
The researcher stressed that the Israeli government supports the settlers' crimes, contrary to what it claims in the media, and clarified that when the Dawabsha family house was burned the Israeli army reached the scene very quickly which indicates that the army knew about the arson attack beforehand.
He warned that this will boost the settlers' persistence in carrying out these heinous systematic attacks especially that the Israeli parties always side with the settlers in their crimes against Palestinian innocent civilians.
The researcher, however, affirmed that the settlers' indulgence in committing crimes against Palestinian citizens will never weaken the Palestinians' steadfastness and adherence to their land.
A group of Israeli troops at noon on Sunday broke into the plazas of the Aqsa Mosque.
The Awqaf Department in Occupied Jerusalem revealed that 25 Israeli soldiers, in military uniform, stormed the holy site from the Magharebah gate. They roamed its plazas amid chanting of worshipers at the Mosque’s gates after being barred from entering the holy place.
It said that the Israeli police and Special Forces secured the soldiers’ incursion into the Muslims’ holy mosque. Settlers participated in the incursion as well.
A Palestinian young man was arrested near al-Silsilah gate and was taken to a police station in the city.
In the morning, 30 settlers stormed the Aqsa Mosque, while it was closed in front of Palestinian women on Thursday.
In a similar context, Israeli policemen summoned a Palestinian old man after chasing him for about two months on a charge of disruption of police work. He was previously arrested and released on condition of deportation from the Aqsa Mosque for two months.
The old man was summoned on a charge of helping Jerusalemite women enter the Aqsa Mosque despite the fact that he is barred from entering the holy site in the first place.
The Awqaf Department in Occupied Jerusalem revealed that 25 Israeli soldiers, in military uniform, stormed the holy site from the Magharebah gate. They roamed its plazas amid chanting of worshipers at the Mosque’s gates after being barred from entering the holy place.
It said that the Israeli police and Special Forces secured the soldiers’ incursion into the Muslims’ holy mosque. Settlers participated in the incursion as well.
A Palestinian young man was arrested near al-Silsilah gate and was taken to a police station in the city.
In the morning, 30 settlers stormed the Aqsa Mosque, while it was closed in front of Palestinian women on Thursday.
In a similar context, Israeli policemen summoned a Palestinian old man after chasing him for about two months on a charge of disruption of police work. He was previously arrested and released on condition of deportation from the Aqsa Mosque for two months.
The old man was summoned on a charge of helping Jerusalemite women enter the Aqsa Mosque despite the fact that he is barred from entering the holy site in the first place.
30 aug 2015
Radical activist Meyer Ettinger
A new education ministry program aims to rehabilitate hilltop youth while preventing the next attack; however, the program has experienced very little success.
The Israeli government initiative has a soothing biblical name, the Hebrew Shepherd, and a serious aim: to keep ultranationalist Jewish settler youths from turning to violence and attacking Palestinians and their property.
But the program - which included plans for a summer camp and carpentry courses to keep the kids out of trouble - has foundered. Many settler youths have refused to cooperate after rumors spread that Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, which snoops on Jewish extremists, was involved.
It is but one example of Israel's failure to rein in youths suspected of carrying out ultranationalist attacks. The deadliest such assault, a firebombing last month on a West Bank home, killed an 18-month-old toddler, Ali Dawabsheh, and his father, Saed, and critically wounded his mother and 4-year-old brother. A Star of David and "revenge" in Hebrew were sprayed on the torched home. In the wake of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged "zero tolerance" for what he called Jewish terrorism.
But there has been complicit tolerance of the phenomenon for years, say Palestinian leaders, former Israeli security officials and even some settlers. They blame holes in Israel's juvenile welfare system, lax law enforcement, a lenient justice system and rabbis and Israeli leaders unwilling or unable to tackle the elusive young fundamentalists. A main focus of the concern is the so-called "hilltop youth," young people among a settler movement that sets up outposts not authorized by the Israeli government on West Bank hilltops - land the Palestinians claim for their hoped for state.
"There is no serious adult, no individual today who says, 'I am the person who will take responsibility,'" said Avia Azulay, 35, a hilltop settler, speaking from his spacious home in the unauthorized West Bank outpost of Shir Hadash. A youth counselor and former hilltop youth himself, Azulay joined the Hebrew Shepherd program a year ago to try to help keep young extremists from the brink of violence, but resigned because he thought the Shin Bet's alleged involvement undermined the young people's trust.
After last month's firebombing, Israel carried out arrest raids of hilltop outposts and jailed three Israeli settler activists in their early 20s for six months without charge, a measure used regularly against Palestinian detainees but rarely on Israelis. Israel has not yet found the culprits of the deadly attack.
The Israeli rights group B'Tselem said despite the recent crackdown, Israel is unwilling to prosecute settlers suspected of crimes against Palestinians. In the past three years, the group said, Israeli civilians set fire to nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank and hurled a firebomb at a Palestinian taxi, but no one was charged.
"The government has created a climate of impunity with settlers," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem. Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said less than 10 percent of police investigations into alleged Israeli crimes committed against Palestinians and their property from 2005-2014 resulted in indictments.
Israeli police defend their efforts to combat Israeli attacks against Palestinians, and say there has been a big jump in arrests and indictments since a special "nationalistic crimes" unit was created in 2013, though they declined to provide precise numbers.
Critics say influential settler rabbis have done little to publicly denounce the violent youths, and that Israeli leaders have embraced settler activists who support them. Netanyahu himself appeared in an election rally this year co-organized by hilltop youth supporter Daniella Weiss. Recent arrests of young settler activists offer a peek into what the Shin Bet says is a fringe group suspected of arson attacks on Palestinian property in order to bring about religious "redemption."
One suspect, Moshe Orbach, is accused of writing a detailed instruction manual on how to set fire to mosques, churches and Palestinian homes. Entitled "Kingdom of Evil," it instructs activists to form underground cells committed to "sanctifying God's name" - and with members who know how "to keep silent in interrogations."
The other two are Meir Ettinger, the 23-year-old grandson of the late Jewish ultranationalist Meir Kahane, whom the Shin Bet calls the ringleader of the group, and Eviatar Slonim, an activist in the hilltop settlements. All three have been jailed without charge for six months, accused of affiliation with an extremist Jewish organization, an accusation they deny. Their so-called administrative detention is a tactic usually reserved for suspected Palestinian militants.
The Hebrew Shepherd initiative once set its sights on Ettinger as part of its efforts to encourage hilltop youth to learn a vocation, according to the settler website Hakol Hayehudi. Speaking to the website, Ettinger said, "During the first meeting with the workers from the program, I noticed how all their efforts were focused on career and money.
This is fundamentally opposed to our values as Jews who work for the sake of the people of Israel." Menachem Ben Shachar, 38, a relative of Ettinger, said the outreach effort has been unsuccessful because it doesn't address the youth's anger with what they see as Israel's ineffective responses to Palestinian attacks.
"Every time Israel fails in its real mission - defending the people of Israel - it creates a few more frustrated youths. There is no organization that can come afterward and try to extinguish the burning flame in the hearts of these youths," Ben Shachar said in an email exchange with The Associated Press.
Israel's Education Ministry says it spearheaded the Hebrew Shepherd initiative in 2013 to "offer an educational-welfare rehabilitative response to young at-risk boys and girls" in the West Bank settlement areas "as part of systemic efforts to eradicate the phenomenon of nationalist crime," according to a ministry document leaked to Israeli media. In the document, the ministry's director general asked the Shin Bet and other government bodies to participate in the program's steering committee.
Hebrew Shepherd director Roee Simon declined a request for an interview, as did the Shin Bet. The Education Ministry also refused to comment despite repeated requests. Although he left the program, Azulay says he still tries to engage hilltop youth. Three nights a week, the burly man with a bushy black beard packs his dusty red sedan with snacks and heads to the hills to meet with them.
His background as a former hilltop youth, along with his firm handshake and contemporary Hebrew slang, give him credibility. Azulay said the majority of the approximately 1,000 hilltop youth are middle-school and high-school dropouts ranging in age from 14 to 20 from cities within Israel, not the West Bank. Adverse to authority, they are drawn to the defiant spirit of the isolated West Bank hilltops.
Squatting on West Bank land to claim it as Jewish, they are furious with Israel's response to Palestinian attacks, Azulay said, leading some to take vigilante action against their Palestinian neighbors. When the time comes for compulsory military service - their ticket into mainstream Israeli society - the army rejects them as too dangerous. Because social workers from one municipal area are not permitted to handle youth from another area, runaways in the West Bank fall through the cracks of the welfare system, Azulay said. He said settler rabbis are afraid to take them under their wing for fear of being accused of backing the violence.
Azulay said he tries to persuade the teens to stay away from vigilante violence so they don't ruin their chances of enlisting into the army. "Go be a pilot, drop a half-ton bomb on a group of terrorists," he said he tells the youths. Another program piloted by a local settler council tries to rehabilitate hilltop youths by helping them pass matriculation exams and persuading the army to enlist them. It has shown some success at one hilltop outpost and is being expanded to another settlement.
An official in the Israeli prime minister's office said in the last five years, Israel beefed up its intelligence, police and law enforcement resources to deal with Jewish extremism. "We are augmenting our efforts because we see this as a challenge to our democracy," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin said political will and public pressure are lacking in the battle to uproot Jewish extremism.
"Violent extremism is a social phenomenon with deep roots. Whoever thinks the Shin Bet, the military or the police can deal with it is mistaken," he wrote on his Facebook page.
A new education ministry program aims to rehabilitate hilltop youth while preventing the next attack; however, the program has experienced very little success.
The Israeli government initiative has a soothing biblical name, the Hebrew Shepherd, and a serious aim: to keep ultranationalist Jewish settler youths from turning to violence and attacking Palestinians and their property.
But the program - which included plans for a summer camp and carpentry courses to keep the kids out of trouble - has foundered. Many settler youths have refused to cooperate after rumors spread that Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, which snoops on Jewish extremists, was involved.
It is but one example of Israel's failure to rein in youths suspected of carrying out ultranationalist attacks. The deadliest such assault, a firebombing last month on a West Bank home, killed an 18-month-old toddler, Ali Dawabsheh, and his father, Saed, and critically wounded his mother and 4-year-old brother. A Star of David and "revenge" in Hebrew were sprayed on the torched home. In the wake of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged "zero tolerance" for what he called Jewish terrorism.
But there has been complicit tolerance of the phenomenon for years, say Palestinian leaders, former Israeli security officials and even some settlers. They blame holes in Israel's juvenile welfare system, lax law enforcement, a lenient justice system and rabbis and Israeli leaders unwilling or unable to tackle the elusive young fundamentalists. A main focus of the concern is the so-called "hilltop youth," young people among a settler movement that sets up outposts not authorized by the Israeli government on West Bank hilltops - land the Palestinians claim for their hoped for state.
"There is no serious adult, no individual today who says, 'I am the person who will take responsibility,'" said Avia Azulay, 35, a hilltop settler, speaking from his spacious home in the unauthorized West Bank outpost of Shir Hadash. A youth counselor and former hilltop youth himself, Azulay joined the Hebrew Shepherd program a year ago to try to help keep young extremists from the brink of violence, but resigned because he thought the Shin Bet's alleged involvement undermined the young people's trust.
After last month's firebombing, Israel carried out arrest raids of hilltop outposts and jailed three Israeli settler activists in their early 20s for six months without charge, a measure used regularly against Palestinian detainees but rarely on Israelis. Israel has not yet found the culprits of the deadly attack.
The Israeli rights group B'Tselem said despite the recent crackdown, Israel is unwilling to prosecute settlers suspected of crimes against Palestinians. In the past three years, the group said, Israeli civilians set fire to nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank and hurled a firebomb at a Palestinian taxi, but no one was charged.
"The government has created a climate of impunity with settlers," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem. Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said less than 10 percent of police investigations into alleged Israeli crimes committed against Palestinians and their property from 2005-2014 resulted in indictments.
Israeli police defend their efforts to combat Israeli attacks against Palestinians, and say there has been a big jump in arrests and indictments since a special "nationalistic crimes" unit was created in 2013, though they declined to provide precise numbers.
Critics say influential settler rabbis have done little to publicly denounce the violent youths, and that Israeli leaders have embraced settler activists who support them. Netanyahu himself appeared in an election rally this year co-organized by hilltop youth supporter Daniella Weiss. Recent arrests of young settler activists offer a peek into what the Shin Bet says is a fringe group suspected of arson attacks on Palestinian property in order to bring about religious "redemption."
One suspect, Moshe Orbach, is accused of writing a detailed instruction manual on how to set fire to mosques, churches and Palestinian homes. Entitled "Kingdom of Evil," it instructs activists to form underground cells committed to "sanctifying God's name" - and with members who know how "to keep silent in interrogations."
The other two are Meir Ettinger, the 23-year-old grandson of the late Jewish ultranationalist Meir Kahane, whom the Shin Bet calls the ringleader of the group, and Eviatar Slonim, an activist in the hilltop settlements. All three have been jailed without charge for six months, accused of affiliation with an extremist Jewish organization, an accusation they deny. Their so-called administrative detention is a tactic usually reserved for suspected Palestinian militants.
The Hebrew Shepherd initiative once set its sights on Ettinger as part of its efforts to encourage hilltop youth to learn a vocation, according to the settler website Hakol Hayehudi. Speaking to the website, Ettinger said, "During the first meeting with the workers from the program, I noticed how all their efforts were focused on career and money.
This is fundamentally opposed to our values as Jews who work for the sake of the people of Israel." Menachem Ben Shachar, 38, a relative of Ettinger, said the outreach effort has been unsuccessful because it doesn't address the youth's anger with what they see as Israel's ineffective responses to Palestinian attacks.
"Every time Israel fails in its real mission - defending the people of Israel - it creates a few more frustrated youths. There is no organization that can come afterward and try to extinguish the burning flame in the hearts of these youths," Ben Shachar said in an email exchange with The Associated Press.
Israel's Education Ministry says it spearheaded the Hebrew Shepherd initiative in 2013 to "offer an educational-welfare rehabilitative response to young at-risk boys and girls" in the West Bank settlement areas "as part of systemic efforts to eradicate the phenomenon of nationalist crime," according to a ministry document leaked to Israeli media. In the document, the ministry's director general asked the Shin Bet and other government bodies to participate in the program's steering committee.
Hebrew Shepherd director Roee Simon declined a request for an interview, as did the Shin Bet. The Education Ministry also refused to comment despite repeated requests. Although he left the program, Azulay says he still tries to engage hilltop youth. Three nights a week, the burly man with a bushy black beard packs his dusty red sedan with snacks and heads to the hills to meet with them.
His background as a former hilltop youth, along with his firm handshake and contemporary Hebrew slang, give him credibility. Azulay said the majority of the approximately 1,000 hilltop youth are middle-school and high-school dropouts ranging in age from 14 to 20 from cities within Israel, not the West Bank. Adverse to authority, they are drawn to the defiant spirit of the isolated West Bank hilltops.
Squatting on West Bank land to claim it as Jewish, they are furious with Israel's response to Palestinian attacks, Azulay said, leading some to take vigilante action against their Palestinian neighbors. When the time comes for compulsory military service - their ticket into mainstream Israeli society - the army rejects them as too dangerous. Because social workers from one municipal area are not permitted to handle youth from another area, runaways in the West Bank fall through the cracks of the welfare system, Azulay said. He said settler rabbis are afraid to take them under their wing for fear of being accused of backing the violence.
Azulay said he tries to persuade the teens to stay away from vigilante violence so they don't ruin their chances of enlisting into the army. "Go be a pilot, drop a half-ton bomb on a group of terrorists," he said he tells the youths. Another program piloted by a local settler council tries to rehabilitate hilltop youths by helping them pass matriculation exams and persuading the army to enlist them. It has shown some success at one hilltop outpost and is being expanded to another settlement.
An official in the Israeli prime minister's office said in the last five years, Israel beefed up its intelligence, police and law enforcement resources to deal with Jewish extremism. "We are augmenting our efforts because we see this as a challenge to our democracy," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin said political will and public pressure are lacking in the battle to uproot Jewish extremism.
"Violent extremism is a social phenomenon with deep roots. Whoever thinks the Shin Bet, the military or the police can deal with it is mistaken," he wrote on his Facebook page.
Earlier this month, a strange thing happened: a Jewish extremist was held in "administrative detention" by Israel. This practise, internment without charge or trial, dates back to the British occupation of Palestine, and Israel habitually uses it against Palestinians. But for a Jewish citizen to be "administratively detained" is highly unusual. The internee is Meir Ettinger, a 24-year-old pro-settler fanatic who is the grandson of the notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Kahane was the founder of the Jewish Defence League, a terrorist organization founded in New York in 1969. The group was responsible for a string of bombing and other violent attacks against Palestinian, Egyptian and Soviet civilian targets in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as against JDL members who quarrelled with the leadership in one way or another.
Kahane later left for Israel to establish the Kach party, although he always maintained his influence over the JDL in the US (he wrote once that he considered the Kach to be the Israeli branch of the JDL). He was eventually elected to the Knesset, before his faction was ejected and recognised as a terrorist organization. Kahane advocated that all Palestinians should be removed by force from the "Land of Israel" – which in his vision included the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Kahane was imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, who saw his agitation against the state as a threat. Kahane Chai, the modern-day incarnation of Kach, has been designated an overseas terrorist organization by the US State Department in its latest annual report on such groups.[PDF]
Today, according to reports in the Israeli press, it seems his grandson has become his ideological heir.
According to the Shin Bet, Israel's secret police, Ettinger leads a small cell of fanatical ideologues called "The Revolt". In their conception of a "Jewish state" they want to overthrow the state of Israel and replace it with an even more extreme religious entity – some sort of "Jewish kingdom".
“The idea of ‘The Revolt’ is very simple,” Ettinger wrote in a 2013 manifesto, according to The New Yorker. “Israel has many weak spots: issues that are tiptoed around so as not to create riots. All we need to do is light up the explosives.”
In the wake of the hideous murders of Ali and Saad Dawabsha, an 18-month-old baby and his father near Nablus in July, Israel made a show of public lamentation before the world's press. The lethal attacks came as the culmination of years of settler terrorism against Palestinian civilians. Deemed "price tag" attacks, these acts ranged from vandalism and graffiti to arson and murder. Settlers from Yitzhar, one of the most fanatic of the West Bank settlements, even once launched a home made rocket into a nearby Palestinian village.
Such "terrorists" would now be caught, Netanyahu insisted this month. The very public arrest and internment of Ettinger is part of this show of concern.
But Israel is acting disingenuously. Ettinger is a product of the extremist climate fostered and funded in Israel and the settlements by the state itself.
As Haaretz columnist Sefi Rachlevsky puts it: "The Shin Bet security service has a great deal of chutzpah. After years of indulging messianic Jewish terror, it places the theological revolution on the shoulders of one Meir Ettinger, as if 'he doesn’t listen to the rabbis.' Why it is convenient for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to write it off to uncontrollable 'wild weeds' is quite clear; it was convenient in the same way after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin."
Rachlevsky points out that Neyanyahu himself has praised extremists, including the fanatic settler Rabbi Dov Lior, who uses his platform to openly call for ethnic cleansing. Last year he said that Israel "must strive to cleanse the entire country" of Palestinians. Lior called Baruch Goldstein (who shot to death 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994) “holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.”
And yet this is not some outlier that the state can pretend it has no links to. Lior is an important spiritual leader in the "Jewish Home" party of Naftali Bennet, the current education minister. Lior put forward the name of Uri Ariel towards the Jewish Home electoral list (Ariel, a settler himself, was housing minister in the last government and is agriculture minister in the current one).
Furthermore, several top advisers in the Jewish Home party were once members of the "Jewish Underground" which terrorised Palestinian civilians in the 1980s, including car bombings targetting the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah, who had to have legs amputated as a result, and only narrowly escaped with their lives.
While it is easy for the Israeli establishment to make a scapegoat of Ettinger, the fact is that he is very much their own son.
An associate editor with The Electronic Intifada, Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London.
Kahane was the founder of the Jewish Defence League, a terrorist organization founded in New York in 1969. The group was responsible for a string of bombing and other violent attacks against Palestinian, Egyptian and Soviet civilian targets in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as against JDL members who quarrelled with the leadership in one way or another.
Kahane later left for Israel to establish the Kach party, although he always maintained his influence over the JDL in the US (he wrote once that he considered the Kach to be the Israeli branch of the JDL). He was eventually elected to the Knesset, before his faction was ejected and recognised as a terrorist organization. Kahane advocated that all Palestinians should be removed by force from the "Land of Israel" – which in his vision included the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Kahane was imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, who saw his agitation against the state as a threat. Kahane Chai, the modern-day incarnation of Kach, has been designated an overseas terrorist organization by the US State Department in its latest annual report on such groups.[PDF]
Today, according to reports in the Israeli press, it seems his grandson has become his ideological heir.
According to the Shin Bet, Israel's secret police, Ettinger leads a small cell of fanatical ideologues called "The Revolt". In their conception of a "Jewish state" they want to overthrow the state of Israel and replace it with an even more extreme religious entity – some sort of "Jewish kingdom".
“The idea of ‘The Revolt’ is very simple,” Ettinger wrote in a 2013 manifesto, according to The New Yorker. “Israel has many weak spots: issues that are tiptoed around so as not to create riots. All we need to do is light up the explosives.”
In the wake of the hideous murders of Ali and Saad Dawabsha, an 18-month-old baby and his father near Nablus in July, Israel made a show of public lamentation before the world's press. The lethal attacks came as the culmination of years of settler terrorism against Palestinian civilians. Deemed "price tag" attacks, these acts ranged from vandalism and graffiti to arson and murder. Settlers from Yitzhar, one of the most fanatic of the West Bank settlements, even once launched a home made rocket into a nearby Palestinian village.
Such "terrorists" would now be caught, Netanyahu insisted this month. The very public arrest and internment of Ettinger is part of this show of concern.
But Israel is acting disingenuously. Ettinger is a product of the extremist climate fostered and funded in Israel and the settlements by the state itself.
As Haaretz columnist Sefi Rachlevsky puts it: "The Shin Bet security service has a great deal of chutzpah. After years of indulging messianic Jewish terror, it places the theological revolution on the shoulders of one Meir Ettinger, as if 'he doesn’t listen to the rabbis.' Why it is convenient for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to write it off to uncontrollable 'wild weeds' is quite clear; it was convenient in the same way after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin."
Rachlevsky points out that Neyanyahu himself has praised extremists, including the fanatic settler Rabbi Dov Lior, who uses his platform to openly call for ethnic cleansing. Last year he said that Israel "must strive to cleanse the entire country" of Palestinians. Lior called Baruch Goldstein (who shot to death 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994) “holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.”
And yet this is not some outlier that the state can pretend it has no links to. Lior is an important spiritual leader in the "Jewish Home" party of Naftali Bennet, the current education minister. Lior put forward the name of Uri Ariel towards the Jewish Home electoral list (Ariel, a settler himself, was housing minister in the last government and is agriculture minister in the current one).
Furthermore, several top advisers in the Jewish Home party were once members of the "Jewish Underground" which terrorised Palestinian civilians in the 1980s, including car bombings targetting the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah, who had to have legs amputated as a result, and only narrowly escaped with their lives.
While it is easy for the Israeli establishment to make a scapegoat of Ettinger, the fact is that he is very much their own son.
An associate editor with The Electronic Intifada, Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London.
A horde of Israeli fanatics, escorted by police officers, stormed on Sunday morning the plazas of Muslims’ holy al-Aqsa Mosque via the Maghareba Gate.
Jerusalem-based sources said the fanatic settlers have cracked down on the peaceful Muslim worshipers and sit-inners maintaining vigil at the Mosque before they headed to the Silsila Gate.
The settlers attended sermons on the alleged temple mount while the Muslim worshipers and sit-inners kept chanting "Allah the Greatest” in protest at the desecration break-in.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation police seized the IDs of the young Muslim worshipers and women at the main entrances to the holy site in an attempt to set the stage for settler’s sacrilegious assaults.
Jerusalem-based sources said the fanatic settlers have cracked down on the peaceful Muslim worshipers and sit-inners maintaining vigil at the Mosque before they headed to the Silsila Gate.
The settlers attended sermons on the alleged temple mount while the Muslim worshipers and sit-inners kept chanting "Allah the Greatest” in protest at the desecration break-in.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation police seized the IDs of the young Muslim worshipers and women at the main entrances to the holy site in an attempt to set the stage for settler’s sacrilegious assaults.
22-year-old Abdul Kareem Youssef Abu Khdheir afternoon Saturday sustained wounds and bruises after he was attacked by a horde of Israeli settlers near the illegal settlement of Reches Shu’fat, in Occupied Jerusalem.
“I sustained injuries in my left hand and was rushed to the Hadassah hospital in al-Issawiya after a gang of over 20 Israeli settlers, in their 20’s of age, suddenly attacked me with stones and smashed my car windshield while I was driving near the Reches Shu’fat settlement,” the victim said.
His father said none of the Israeli assailants were arrested by the Israeli occupation police, who were at the scene and remained mum over the attack.
An altercation and fistfight flared up between a group of Palestinian unarmed protesters and the Israeli vandals following the assault.
The father spoke out against the increasing settler attacks against Palestinians in Shu’fat and Beit Hanina following the murder of the Palestinian minor Mohammed Abu Khdheir.
“I sustained injuries in my left hand and was rushed to the Hadassah hospital in al-Issawiya after a gang of over 20 Israeli settlers, in their 20’s of age, suddenly attacked me with stones and smashed my car windshield while I was driving near the Reches Shu’fat settlement,” the victim said.
His father said none of the Israeli assailants were arrested by the Israeli occupation police, who were at the scene and remained mum over the attack.
An altercation and fistfight flared up between a group of Palestinian unarmed protesters and the Israeli vandals following the assault.
The father spoke out against the increasing settler attacks against Palestinians in Shu’fat and Beit Hanina following the murder of the Palestinian minor Mohammed Abu Khdheir.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Saturday violently attacked a peaceful march organized near al-Aroub refugee camp, north of al-Khalil city, in protest at the appropriation of Beit al-Baraka building by Jewish settlers.
Beit al-Baraka used to be a hospital belonging to an American Christian society, which had been providing free medical care for tuberculosis patients since its inception in the early 40s until its closure in 1983.
Anti-settlement activist in al-Khalil, Rateb al-Jabour, told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that a number of protesters were slightly injured when Israeli soldiers subdued them during a march demanding the protection of Beit al-Baraka building against Judaization.
Jabour added that the soldiers violently attacked the protesters outside the hospital building with their rifle butts and declared the area a closed military zone.
Father Atallah Hanna, Archbishop of the Palestinian Orthodox Church in Occupied Jerusalem, and foreign activists participated in the march.
Beit al-Baraka used to be a hospital belonging to an American Christian society, which had been providing free medical care for tuberculosis patients since its inception in the early 40s until its closure in 1983.
Anti-settlement activist in al-Khalil, Rateb al-Jabour, told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that a number of protesters were slightly injured when Israeli soldiers subdued them during a march demanding the protection of Beit al-Baraka building against Judaization.
Jabour added that the soldiers violently attacked the protesters outside the hospital building with their rifle butts and declared the area a closed military zone.
Father Atallah Hanna, Archbishop of the Palestinian Orthodox Church in Occupied Jerusalem, and foreign activists participated in the march.
A Palestinian boy on Saturday evening suffered a serious bullet injury in the leg when the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) violently attacked a peaceful march in support of the Aqsa Mosque in Kafr Qaddum town near Qalqiliya.
Popular resistance activist Murad Ashtiwi reported that 17-year-old Amjad Abu Khaled was shot by an Israeli soldier in one of his legs, which caused him a femur fracture, adding that the boy was rushed to Rafidia hospital for treatment.
Ashtiwi explained that hundreds of Palestinian young men rallied in Kafr Qaddum to protest Israel's attempts to divide the Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially before they marched to an area near the illegal settlement of Kedumim, where Israeli soldiers fired a hail of tear gas grenades and bullets at them.
In another incident, a horde of Jewish settlers on the evening of the same day closed the main road to Yasuf town, northeast of Salfit city, with barriers and embarked on attacking passing Palestinian vehicles with stones.
A local source from the town told Quds Press that Israeli troops arrived to the scene and provided protection for settlers from Taffuh settlement, which was built illegally on Palestinian lands south of Nablus.
Popular resistance activist Murad Ashtiwi reported that 17-year-old Amjad Abu Khaled was shot by an Israeli soldier in one of his legs, which caused him a femur fracture, adding that the boy was rushed to Rafidia hospital for treatment.
Ashtiwi explained that hundreds of Palestinian young men rallied in Kafr Qaddum to protest Israel's attempts to divide the Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially before they marched to an area near the illegal settlement of Kedumim, where Israeli soldiers fired a hail of tear gas grenades and bullets at them.
In another incident, a horde of Jewish settlers on the evening of the same day closed the main road to Yasuf town, northeast of Salfit city, with barriers and embarked on attacking passing Palestinian vehicles with stones.
A local source from the town told Quds Press that Israeli troops arrived to the scene and provided protection for settlers from Taffuh settlement, which was built illegally on Palestinian lands south of Nablus.
Groups of Jewish settlers stormed on Saturday al-Karmel town in al-Khalil in the southern West Bank.
Eyewitnesses told the PIC reporter that groups of settlers broke into al-Karmel town to the east of al-Khalil under protection of Israeli occupation forces (IOF). The settlers attempted to perform Talmudic rituals at a water pool in the town while Israeli military vehicles were deployed in location.
Repeated settlers’ incursions into the town particularly in the vicinity of the town’s water pool and park have been conducted for confiscation purposes under the claim of being Jewish holy sites.
In a similar context, the IOF erected on Saturday morning a military checkpoint at the entrance of al-Aroub refugee camp in northern al-Khalil.
Eyewitnesses told the PIC reporter that groups of settlers broke into al-Karmel town to the east of al-Khalil under protection of Israeli occupation forces (IOF). The settlers attempted to perform Talmudic rituals at a water pool in the town while Israeli military vehicles were deployed in location.
Repeated settlers’ incursions into the town particularly in the vicinity of the town’s water pool and park have been conducted for confiscation purposes under the claim of being Jewish holy sites.
In a similar context, the IOF erected on Saturday morning a military checkpoint at the entrance of al-Aroub refugee camp in northern al-Khalil.