 | This Israeli prosecution, conviction of Jewish terrorists needs attention from an expert in law. The specific problem is: legal status needs expansion.(December 2018) |
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Jewish extremist terrorism is terrorism, including religious terrorism, committed by extremists within Judaism. [1] [2]
According to Mark Burgess (a Center for Defense Information research analyst), the 1st century Jewish political and religious movement called Zealotry was one of the first examples of the use of terrorism by Jews. [3] They sought to incite the people of Judaea to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from Israel by force of arms. The term Zealot, in Hebrew kanai , means one who is zealous on behalf of God. [4] [5] The most extremist groups of Zealots were called Sicarii. [3] Sicarii used violent stealth tactics against Romans. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae , small daggers, from which they received their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, they stabbed their enemies (Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians), lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. In one account, given in the Talmud, Sicarii destroyed the city's food supply so that the people would be forced to fight against the Roman siege instead of negotiating peace. Sicarii also raided Jewish habitations and killed fellow Jews whom they considered apostates and collaborators.
Jewish terrorism in Israel existed for a few years during the 1950s and was directed at internal Israeli-Jewish targets, not at the Israeli Arab population. [6] There was then a long intermission until the 1980s, when the Jewish Underground was exposed. [6] The phenomenon of price tag attacks began around 2008. These are hate crimes committed by extremist settler Jewish Israelis that usually involve the destruction of property or hateful graffiti, particularly targeting property associated with Arabs, Christians, secular Israelis, and Israeli soldiers. The name was derived from the words "Price tag" which may be scrawled on the site of the attack — with the allegation that the attack was a "price" for settlements the government forced them to give up and revenge for Palestinian attacks on settlers. [7]
Researchers Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger suggested that similarities exist between Jewish religious terrorists and jihad networks in Western democracies, among them: alienation and isolation from the values of the majority, mainstream culture, which they view as an existential threat to their own community; and that their ideology is not exclusively "religious", as it attempts to achieve political, territorial, and nationalistic goals as well (e.g. the disruption of the Camp David accords). However, the newer of these Jewish groups have tended to emphasize religious motives for their actions at the expense of secular ones. In the case of Jewish terrorism in modern Israel, most networks consist of religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Jews living in isolated, homogeneous communities. However, unlike jihad networks, Jewish terrorists have not engaged in mass-casualty attacks, with the exception of Baruch Goldstein. [8]
Shin Bet has complained that the Israeli government is too lenient in dealing with religious extremism of Jewish extremists who want the creation of a Jewish land based on halacha, Jewish religious laws. Says Haaretz: "The Shin Bet complained that the courts are too lenient, particularly in enforcement against those who violate restraining orders distancing them from the West Bank or restricting their movement. The Shin Bet supports the position of Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who has called for limited use of administrative detention against Jewish terrorists." [9] Israeli agencies keeping tabs on the religious terrorist groups say they are "anarchist" and "anti-Zionist", motivated to bring down the government of Israel and create a new Israeli "kingdom" that would operate according to halacha (Jewish law). [9] A week after the July 2015 attacks, administrative detention was approved for Jewish terror suspects. [7] In 2024, Haaretz reported that the settlements and outposts from which many settler attacks come are financed by the Israeli government.
Haaretz's investigation reveals that at least six government ministries are involved in financing and maintaining this whole burgeoning enterprise, whose underlying purpose is the forceful takeover of land and systematic dispossession of Palestinian residents. [10]
The following groups have been considered religious terrorist organizations in Israel (in chronological order by establishment year):
Several violent acts by Jews have been described as terrorism and attributed to religious motivations. The following are the most notable: [49]
Our Jewish terrorism dataset consists of a list of terror incidents perpetrated by Jewish terrorists in Israel.
The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a far-right religious and political organization in the United States and Canada. Its stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary"; it has been classified as "right-wing terrorist group" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 2001, and is also designated as hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Most terrorist watch groups classify the group as inactive as of 2015.
Meir David HaKohen Kahane was an American-born Israeli Orthodox ordained rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in Israel's Knesset. Founder of the Israeli political party Kach—whose legacy continues to influence militant and far-right political groups active today in Israel,—he was convicted of multiple acts of terrorism in the United States and in Israel.
Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-Israeli mass murderer, religious extremist, and physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an incident of Jewish terrorism. Goldstein was a supporter of Kach, a religious Zionist party that the United States, the European Union and other countries designate as a terrorist organization.
Ami Popper is an Israeli terrorist who committed the Oyoun Qara massacre on 20 May 1990, killing 7 Palestinians at a bus stop in Rishon Lezion, Israel. Popper was arrested and charged with 7 counts of murder for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to 40 years.
Hilltop Youth are extremist Religious Zionist settler youth operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They are known for establishing outposts without an Israeli legal basis and conducting settler violence against Palestinians there.
Noam Federman is a religious-Orthodox right-wing Israeli Jew in Hebron, and a former leader of the Kach Party, which he has been involved with since he was 14. He has been held in administrative detention several times. Federman hosts a weekly Internet program called "Federman Without Censor". It can be heard on the Hebrew section of the Jewish Task Force's website. JTF funds his political activities in Israel.
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre or the Hebron massacre, was a mass shooting carried out by Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement. On 25 February 1994, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which had overlapped in that year with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Goldstein, dressed in Israeli army uniform, opened fire with an assault rifle on a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He killed 29 people, including children as young as 12, and wounded 125 others. Goldstein was overpowered and beaten to death by survivors.
Bat Ayin is an Israeli settlement in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron, founded in 1989 by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, in lands that Israel confiscated from the neighbouring Palestinian villages of Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah and Jab'a. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council, with a population of less than 1,000, consisting mainly of "Ba'alei T'shuva" Jews with Hasidic tendencies. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this.
The Jewish Underground, or in abbreviated form, simply makhteret, was a radical right-wing fundamentalist organization considered terrorist by Israel, formed by prominent members of the Israeli political movement Gush Emunim that existed from 1979 to 1984. Two issues catalyzed the establishment of the underground: One was the signing of the Camp David Accords, which led to the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979, and which the movement, opposed to the peace process, wished to block, viewing it as the first step in the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. A second element was the settlement project, which, in bringing two distinct ethnic communities into closer proximity, led to an uptick in hostilities that brought about a growing emphasis on the existential threat in both communities. The Jewish Underground developed two operational objectives: One consisted of a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock, while the other branch concentrated on both avenging acts of Palestinian violence against settlers and of establishing a punitive deterrence. Some understood the terrorist acts as a means of inducing Palestinians to flee their homeland, based on the 1948 and 1967 experience, and parallels are drawn to the Terror Against Terror movement, which had a similar aim. Robert Friedman stated that the Makhteret was "the most violent anti-Arab terrorist organization since the birth of Israel".
Terror Against Terror was a radical Jewish militant organization active in Israel that openly espoused the ideology of perpetrating terrorism and committed several violent attacks directed at Palestinians, ranging from vandalism to mass shooting to murder. The group consisted of many Jewish-American settlers living in Hebron who considered themselves acolytes of Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Kach organization which had established the group. Kahane had publicly advocated since 1974 that Arab terrorism should be met with Jewish terrorism, hence TNT. The group began committing violent acts against Arabs in 1975.
Yaakov Teitel is an American-born Israeli religious nationalist, convicted for killing two people in 2009. Teitel, who had immigrated to Israel in 2000, settling in a West Bank settlement, confessed to planning and committing various acts of terrorism and hate crimes against Palestinians, homosexuals, left-wingers, missionary Christians, and police officers across Israel. Teitel was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is currently serving.
Judaism's doctrines and texts have sometimes been associated with violence or anti-violence. Laws requiring the eradication of evil, sometimes using violent means, exist in the Jewish tradition. However, Judaism also contains peaceful texts and doctrines. There is often a juxtaposition of Judaic law and theology to violence and nonviolence by groups and individuals. Attitudes and laws towards both peace and violence exist within the Jewish tradition. Throughout history, Judaism's religious texts or precepts have been used to promote as well as oppose violence.
Lehava is a far-right and Jewish supremacist organization based in Israel that strictly opposes Jewish assimilation, objecting to most personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews. It is opposed to the Christian presence in Israel. It has an anti-miscegenation focus, denouncing marriages between Jews and non-Jews forbidden by Orthodox Jewish law. The group has over 10,000 members. In 2024, the United States placed Lehava and its leader, Bentzi Gopstein, on a sanctions list for their role in fomenting Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, labeling Lehava "the largest violent extremist organization in Israel."
The Zion Square assault, also described by Israeli police, the judge who passed sentence, Israeli and foreign media as a "lynch" or "attempted lynch(ing)", was an attack by Israeli youths against four Palestinian teenagers that took place on the night of 16–17 August 2012 at Zion Square in Jerusalem. The four were chased by 10–15 teenagers and a 17-year-old Palestinian boy Jamal Julani was beaten unconscious and subsequently found to be in a critical condition.
Kahanism is a religious Zionist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach party in Israel.
Kach was a radical Orthodox Jewish, religious Zionist political party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971 based on his Jewish-Orthodox-nationalist ideology, the party won a single seat in the Knesset in the 1984 elections, after several electoral failures. However, it was barred from participating in the next elections in 1988 under the revised Knesset Elections Law banning parties that incited racism. After Kahane's assassination in 1990 the party split, with Kahane Chai breaking away from the main Kach faction.
Ben-Zion "Bentzi" Gopstein is a political activist affiliated with the far-right in Israel, a student of Meir Kahane, and founder and director of Lehava ("Flame"), an Israeli Jewish anti-assimilation organization. He was a member of the Council of Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement where Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir also resides, between 2010 and 2013. In November 2019, he was indicted on charges of incitement to terrorism, violence, and racism. In April 2024, he was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State and the European Union.
On 31 July 2015, Israeli settlers firebombed a Palestinian family home in late July 2015 in the village of Duma, killing three people; 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive in the fire, while both his parents died from their injuries within weeks. On 3 January 2016, 21 year old Israeli settler Amiram Ben-Uliel was indicted for the murder, along with an Israeli minor, for participation in planning the murder. In addition, along with two others, they were both charged with one count of membership in a terrorist organization.
Sicarii (Daggermen) was a Jewish terrorist group active in Israel that took responsibility for a series of terrorist attacks between 1989 and 1990 on Palestinians and Jewish political and media figures sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. They named themselves after the ancient Sicarii rebels, a group of Jewish zealots who opposed the Roman occupation of Judaea.
Far-right politics in Israel encompasses ideologies such as ultranationalism, Jewish supremacy, Jewish fascism, Jewish fundamentalism, Anti-Arabism, and ideological movements such as Neo-Zionism and Kahanism.
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