A look at the history of Jewish extremism in Israel

Al-Hayat al-Jadida reported on Palestinian Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi denouncing the Jewish settlers who perpetrated the latest arson attack as having their hands covered by Palestinian children’s blood. The Shin Bet sought to put Ettinger under administrative detention in 2014, according to Haaretz, but state prosecutor Shai Nitzan denied the request, instead barring Ettinger from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Authorities in Israel arrested Eviatar Slonim on Tuesday for belonging to an extremist organization, following the arrest of Meir Ettinger, leader of an ultra-nationalist group, who topped Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet’s list of most wanted Jewish extremists.

Meir Ettinger was arrested Monday by Shin Bet, the Israeli equivilant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for “involvement in an extremist Jewish organization”.

Israel used a controversial decades-old form of detention without trial against an alleged Jewish extremist for the first time, following an outcry over the death of a Palestinian toddler in an arson attack.

“Our policy is one of zero tolerance against terrorism, wherever it comes from”, he said on Tuesday while visiting an Israeli woman in hospital after a petrol bomb attack on her auto late Monday. Instead, a restraining order was issued that prohibited him from being in Jerusalem and the West Bank. In a message to those he says believe “there is a supreme law above the country’s laws”, Netanyahu said that is not the case. His lawyer, Yuval Zemer, advised Israel’s Military Radio that authorities arrested his shopper to appease an Israeli public outraged by the arson assault.

Graffiti at the site of the attack indicated it was carried out by Jewish extremists.

Judicial officials, including Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, decided Tuesday that subject to the approval of Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, they would authorize holding Ettinger and three other suspects without charge in administrative detention, a practice used nearly exclusively for Palestinian terror suspects. It isn’t saying whether he is suspected in last week’s arson attack, which killed an 18-month-old boy and severely injured his parents and brother in the West Bank. He moved to the northern city of Safed, a hub for Jewish religious mystics.

“They appear to symbolize a comparatively new type of spiritual authority – that of the violent activists themselves”, Fischer stated.

“While it is natural that the security forces may identify more with their own people, procedures regarding law enforcement in situations involving violent Israelis must be clearly laid out and consistently implemented”, RHR said in a statement, regarding the Saturday incident.

Last week, settlers clashed with Israeli troops as Israeli bulldozers demolished a contested housing complex in another Jewish settlement in the West Bank an action that has previously drawn reprisals from settler youth.