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Articles re: Olmert Condeming of Attack on Sternhell & Threat from new "Jewish Underground"

from Reuters, YNET, Ma'ariv, Ha'aretz, Jerusalem Post. and Bloomberg. Others were published in JTA, The Guardian, Financial Times, and more.

Sun Sep 28

Reuters: "Israel PM sees threat from 'Jewish underground'"

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new ultranationalist underground is apparently active in Israel and responsible for a bombing that wounded an outspoken critic of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday.

"The security agencies have been ordered to deal with this case, investigate it and act with the utmost speed to bring to justice what appears to be another underground," Olmert told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.

Professor Zeev Sternhell, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a leading opponent of settlement building in the Palestinian territories, was slightly wounded on Thursday when a pipe bomb exploded outside his home.

Police found posters in his Jerusalem neighborhood offering a one million shekel ($294,000) reward to anyone killing a member of Israel's Peace Now movement that opposes Jewish settlement on land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Olmert compared the bombing with the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish ultranationalist and a hand grenade attack that killed a Peace Now activist in 1983.

"A bad wind of extremism, hate, evil, violence and contempt for state authorities is blowing through certain sectors of the Israeli public and threatening Israeli democracy," said Olmert, who is engaged in land-for-peace talks with the Palestinians.

In the 1980s, a Jewish underground group, acting after six Jewish seminary students were killed in a Palestinian attack, carried out bombings that maimed several West Bank mayors and a shooting in an Islamic college that killed three students.

Members of the group were jailed but the sentences were later commuted by then-President Chaim Herzog.

Olmert, who resigned a week ago in a corruption scandal, is serving in a caretaker capacity until a new Israeli government is formed. His deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is trying to put together a governing coalition.


YNET: "Olmert: Attack on Prof. Sternhell a threat to democracy"

Prime minister opens cabinet meeting with stark condemnation of pipe bomb detonated on leftist scholar's front door, says radicalism, malice pose threat to Israel
Roni Sofer

"An evil streak of radicalism, malice, hatred and disregard of State law is threatening Israeli democracy," said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday.
 
Olmert went on to condemn the attack on left-wing Professor Ze'ev Sternhell, who was wounded after unknown persons detonated a pipe bomb at his front door on Thursday.
 
"One cannot help but see the resemblance between the murder of Emil Greenzweig (a Peace Now activist who was killed in 1983 during a political march in Jerusalem), the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the attack on the professor," said the prime minister.
 
The attack was widely condemned by political leader spanning the entire political spectrum. 
 
The Shin Bet and the Israel police are in the midst of investigating the grave incident. One of the leads probed is that of several threatening messages allegedly posted on a right-wing internet forum, against left-wing activist.
 
"On September 25, we - the members of the true right - will launch a vendetta against a senior leftists figure," said one of the messages.
 
Police are struggling with the fact that the message did not carry a date stamp, preventing them from establishing whether or not it was posted near the time of the attack on Sternhell.
 
Sternhell, who moderately wounded in the attack and released from hospital on Thursday evening, said he would not bow to threats: "From the moment I returned home, my life is back on track, as it was until now.
 
"There will no change whatsoever. I'll continue locking the doors, not because what happened but due to the multiple burglaries in the area, and I'll continue to preach and voice my views as I have done till now." 


Ma'ariv: "Investigators Suspect Sternhell Was Targeted by New Right Wing Underground"

by Amir Ben-David -- An extreme right-wing organization, which has been responsible for a long list of attacks in recent years, is behind last week's pipe bomb attack at the entrance to the home of the left-wing activist Professor Zeev Sternhell. This suspicion has emerged from the joint investigation by the Jerusalem police Central Unit and the Jewish branch of the General Security Service.

   Among the attacks attributed to the organization is the planting of a bomb at the community police post in the settlement of Eli in November 2006, eight days before the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. The bomb was discovered and detonated safely. The sign attached to it said "Sodomites Out."    

   Five months later a similar explosive charge was discovered in a vineyard beside the nunnery in Beit Jamal, near Beit Shemesh. The charge had been fitted with a trip-wire, and it slightly injured the driver of a tractor that was passing by.

   A month later a small bomb went off on the road on Zarhi Street in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood. Investigators found that the device was very similar to the two previous charges that were planted in Eli and Beit Jamal. Last March, Avner Street in the town of Ariel was shaken by an explosion. A bomb disguised as a gift of cookies and sweets sent for the Purim festival, exploded in the hands of a 15 year-old boy who found the parcel at the entrance to his house. The boy was seriously injured, and it is suspected that whoever planted it had targeted his parents because they were suspected of belonging to the Jews for Jesus sect.

   There is a growing feeling among police and security establishment investigators that the charge planted at the entrance to Prof. Sternhell's home last week was the fifth bomb to be placed by this extreme right-wing group. The investigators learned that Sternhell received telephone threats about five years ago in the wake of articles which he had published in the press, and has also been subjected to telephone harassment in recent months.

   Police are now examining the fliers found at the scene of the bombing, offering a prize of NIS 1.1 million, for anyone who attacks members of the Peace Now organization. They are also examining a report that appeared on the Genuine Right Wing website, threatening an attack on Peace Now members. The website owners issued a disclaimer saying the message had been planted on the website maliciously and was not put there by the directors of the forum.

   As he was discharged from the hospital at the weekend, Sternhell said: "I will continue to express my opinions about the problematical situation." He said he had no doubt about which side of the political spectrum had planted the bomb. "Clearly it came from the side of the extreme right. It could be a lone lunatic, an organization, three people or an entire settlement, which chose to settle this or that account." 


Jerusalem Post: "Police: Jewish underground may be emerging"

Sep. 28, 2008

ABE SELIG and YAAKOV KATZ , THE JERUSALEM POST

A new Jewish underground could have been responsible for Thursday morning's attack on left-wing professor Ze'ev Sternhell, security forces said on Sunday.

Sternhell, a political scientist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem known for his vocal criticisms of the settler movement and IDF actions in the West Bank, was lightly wounded around 1 a.m. on Thursday morning when a small pipe bomb exploded outside his Jerusalem apartment.

A security official told The Jerusalem Post, "The investigation is continuing and we are looking into a wide range of possibilities. The main fear is that there is a new underground cell that is planning additional attacks."

Flyers found near Sternhell's apartment offering an NIS 1 million reward to anyone who killed those associated with the left-wing group Peace Now are one of several clues that have led security officials to speculate that this attack was planned by Jewish right-wing extremists.

Police said on Sunday that they were also looking into messages found on a right-wing Web site, in which users had posted threatening messages against left-wing activists and praised last week's attack at Sternhell's home.

Security officials were also analyzing an e-mail sent over the weekend to media outlets and MKs which claims to expose the identity of a 17-year-old who, the sender claims, perpetrated the bombing.

The anonymous author of the e-mail attached messages from a right wing forum, entitled "The Real Right," which he claimed had been written by the attacker.

The e-mail also includes an undated posting in which an unidentified user invites others to join him in attacking a well-known leftist activist. The attack, however, was supposed to have taken place the day after Sternhell was targeted.

"On September 25, 2008, we the members of the true rightist organization will embark on a revenge mission against a senior leftist political figure," the posting read. "Whoever is interested in joining is asked to send me a message privately, not through the forum."

Another e-mail indicated the user's desire to "shut up" MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with an army-issue weapon, while other messages purportedly advocated the use of an Apache attack helicopter to assassinate High Supreme Court judges, because they were "terrorists."

One of the site's users, identified as "Aharon," has numerous postings advocating the murder of Gush Shalom activists, B'Tselem workers, anarchists, and virtually everyone else whose views conflict with those of the far Right.

By Sunday evening, users on the site had caught on to the media attention and were posting warnings to each other that the Shin Bet was "coming after them." Postings praising the attack on Sternhell however, were still visible on the site.

According to the security officials, the investigation has also explored possibility that those who perpetuated the attack were also responsible for a series of bombings over the past two years, including one against a Messianic Jewish family in Ariel earlier this year, in which a boy was seriously wounded.

However, Judea and Samaria police spokesman Danny Poleg on Sunday denied reports that a possible link existed between the Sternhell attack and the Ariel bombing.

"I have no comment about it, except that as far as I know, it's not true," Poleg said.

Meanwhile, no one has been arrested in the attack on Sternhell, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Sunday when asked about the direction of the investigation.

"We're carrying out a thorough investigation to find out exactly what happened and we're looking at all different possibilities," Rosenfeld said.

"That it was perpetrated by right-wing extremists may not be 100 percent correct, and we're looking at all the pieces of evidence found at the scene, including pamphlets threatening members of Peace Now, and the pipe bomb itself, to determine who was responsible."

Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.


Bloomberg: "Olmert Says Attack on Settlement Critic Threatens Democracy"

By Gwen Ackerman

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert blamed an attack on an outspoken critic of Jewish settlement in the West Bank on what may be a newly formed Jewish underground and said the violence threatened the country's democracy.

``An evil wind of extremism, hatred, violence, malice, of unlawfulness, of lack of restraint, of disregard for the state has swept through certain sectors of the Israeli society and is threatening Israeli democracy,'' Olmert told his Cabinet today.

Police have not yet found the unknown assailants who threw a pipe bomb at Zeev Sternhall, who won the Israel Prize for political science this year, injuring him as he locked up his home on Sept. 24.

Violence between opposing Jewish political groups is not unknown in Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by Yigal Amir, who sought to stop him from handing over land for peace to the Palestinians. Peace activist Emil Grunzweig was killed in 1983 when a Jewish radical lobbed a grenade at demonstrators rallying against Israel's war in Lebanon.

Olmert drew a direct line between Rabin's assassination, Grunzweig's murder and the attack on Sternhall.

``Security forces have been instructed to act with the greatest speed to find those responsible, who appear to be part of a new Jewish underground, and bring them to court,'' Olmert said in his remarks, which were published on his Web site.

Leaflets Found

In police searches of the vicinity of Sternhall's home last week, leaflets were found offering a 1 million-shekel ($290,000) reward to anyone who murdered a member of Peace Now, an Israeli movement that monitors construction in West Bank Jewish settlements.

The last Israeli conviction of a Jewish underground was in 1984. Its members, who operated in the West Bank, were given prison sentences ranging from eight years to life. Most were pardoned by the president after several years in prison.

Sternhall, a former professor of political science at Hebrew University, writes commentary in the Haaretz criticizing Jewish settlement in the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan 41 years ago. Some 300,000 Jewish settlers and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the territory.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, which it captured from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war, in 2005 and evacuated all its settlements there.

Relocation

Olmert has been negotiating for a peace deal with the Palestinians that would lead to the relocation of thousands of settlers living in communities in the West Bank. Livni, poised to succeed Olmert after he resigned last week, is likely to continue a similar line of talks.

``Fanatics outside of the Israeli democratic process feel like they are losing the battle and are trying to up the ante,'' Gerald Steinberg, a political analyst at Bar Ilan University, said by telephone. ``This action seems to be coming from a few individuals working together and not the action of a well- organized group.''

In the West Bank city of Nablus today, Palestinian municipal official Ghassan Daghlas said an 18-year-old Palestinian shepherd was shot and killed by Jewish settlers. Daghlas said that people in a car belonging to settlers from the Itamar settlement chased the boy down and then fired on him.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said by telephone that police were investigating the incident.