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[Kahanist] Skinheads in Jerusalem

Maariv, one of Israel's major Hebrew-language newspapers, reported this week on a new and disturbing development: Jewish skinheads in Jerusalem who, among other things, are "travelling to particularly sensitive spots and inciting against Arabs." 

The article, which has not been picked up by the English-language press, notes that "One expression of the new phenomenon was seen last Wednesday, after the terror attack in Jerusalem: Several skinheads attacked Arab passers-by near the site of the attack outside the Jerusalem International Convention Center, including one Arab woman from East Jerusalem." 

Full article (translation by Israel News Today), after the break.

Skinheads, Jerusalem Version
Ma'ariv, 3/27/11  (p. 15)
by Yossi Eli and Omri Maniv

For the first time in Israel there are Jewish skinheads. Ma'ariv has learned that dozens of young people identified with the ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane have recently started to adopt even more extreme positions, shaving their heads like young skin heads in Germany, Britain and Russia, travelling to particularly sensitive spots and inciting against Arabs. One expression of the new phenomenon was seen last Wednesday, after the terror attack in Jerusalem: Several skinheads attacked Arab passers-by near the site of the attack outside the Jerusalem International Convention Center, including one Arab woman from East Jerusalem.
 
Their methods are simple: while security forces were busy at the scene of the attack trying to save lives and apprehend the perpetrators, the skinheads hurried to the scene in order to try to incite angry onlookers to commit anti-Arab acts, thus giving police even more to do.

A short while after the terror attack in Jerusalem, extreme right wing activists arrived at the scene, including several members of the "Kahane Hai" organization, and they started to gather together Haredi and other onlookers. Together, they sang racist songs against Arabs and left wing Israelis. The Kahane Hai activists are fully aware of the tendency towards extremism amongst the Haredi community in Jerusalem, and they used the opportunity to incite.

One youth, D., shaved most of his head, leaving only a menorah shaved into the back of his head. The menorah is the symbol of the secular right wing Beitar movement, and he wore a yellow shirt with the words "Kahane was right" on the back and "continuing in his path," with a photograph of Rabbi Kahane, on the front.

D. did not wear a kippa but he did shave part of his hair into the shape of a kippa. "We must expel the Arabs from the entire Land of Israel so the land can be holy, like it once was. All I've got to say is 'Let the People of Israel Live,'" he told Ma'ariv shortly after the attack last Wednesday.

"There shouldn't be Arabs here. If there were only right wing Jews here everything would be alright. Today we will ask God to do what we cannot do, because there is a law and we cannot take it into our hands. We will continue in the path of Rabbi Kahane."

Several minutes later he and his skinhead friends attacked an Arab woman and other Arab passers-by. Police did not arrest anybody because they were afraid of igniting the area, but they detained them for racist incitement and removed them from the scene. Police officials said, "We are certainly concerned about extreme reactions by these people with all kinds of nationalist incidents."