Terror Against Terror (Hebrew: Terror Neged Terror, "TNT") 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 [1] to murder. [2] The group consisted of many Jewish-American settlers living in Hebron who considered themselves acolytes of Rabbi Meir Kahane, [1] leader of the Kach organization which had established the group. [2] Kahane had publicly advocated since 1974 that Arab terrorism should be met with Jewish terrorism, hence TNT. [3] [4] The group began committing violent acts against Arabs in 1975. [2]
In the summer of 1983 five American immigrants – Mike Guzovsky, Meir Leibowitz, Levi Hazan, Yehuda Richter, and Craig Arthur (Aviel) Leitner – decided to step up the violence of TNT, particularly in the wake of the Camp David Accords and treaty. [1] The five had known each other from the New York JDL [5] and were with Kach; Leitner in particular was evading possible prosecution for violence in the U.S., [5] while Richter was part of the TNT's suicide cell at Yamit. [1] They began by burning vehicles and the office of the Al-Fajr Jerusalem newspaper, threw Molotov cocktails at homes, and beat several residents. [5] On the morning of March 4, 1984, the group opened fire with Guzovsky's father's M16 on a bus full of Arab workers near Mazra'a e-Sharqiya, leaving six wounded. [1] They claimed responsibility by phone under the name of "the Shelomo Ben-Yosef Brigade of TNT". [6] Shin Bet were already monitoring the group, [1] and by March 6 they arrested seven suspects in relation to the shooting and the other recent attacks by Guzovsky's group. Charges were filed again Guzovsky, Leibowitz, Hazan, and Richter, [6] with lesser charges against Leitner, the car driver, who was to testify against the others but instead fled to his home in New York. Hazan, Leibowitz, and Richter were convicted while Guzovsky was acquitted. [1] : 194 Leitner was extradited in 1986 and served the remainder of a 30-month sentence. [7] [8] Richter and Guzovsky continued in leadership roles of Kahane Chai, and would be jailed for future violent activism. [1] : 194
On March 27, 1984, Israeli police arrested four youths from the Ein Kerem neighborhood in West Jerusalem for 14 hand-grenade attacks against Christian and Muslim holy sites. The attacks took place over a series of months in Jerusalem and Palestinian Territories and been claimed by "Terror Against Terror". Three of the suspects, Uri Ben-Ayun, David Deri and his cousin Amram Deri, were convicted and given six-year sentences with a three-year suspended sentence. [9]
General Yehoshafat Harkabi described them as :
serious people who occupy high positions among their public . .they have a rational state of mind and their chief motivation stems apparently from the awareness that annexation of the West Bank together with its Arab population would be disastrous and tantamount to national suicide - unless that population were thinned out and made to flee by terrorism. This reasoning is not moral, but it stems from the rational conclusion of the policy that aims at annexation. Such terrorism is neither a 'punishment' nor a deterrent; it is a political instrument. [10]
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 ordained Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in Israel's Knesset before being convicted of acts of terrorism. He founded the Israeli political party Kach. A cofounder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), he espoused strong views against antisemitism.
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 the 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, convicted for the killing of 7 people in Rishon Lezion on May 20, 1990. Known as the Oyoun Qara massacre to Palestinians, for unknown reasons Popper killed and wounded Palestinian men at a bus stop in Rishon Lezion, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to 40 years.
El Sayyid Nosair is an Egyptian-born American citizen, convicted of involvement in the 1993 New York City landmark bomb plot. He had earlier been tried for, but acquitted of, the 1990 New York City assassination of Meir Kahane, a Jewish Rabbi, far-right Israeli politician, and founder of the Jewish Defense League. He later admitted to having committed this assassination as well.
Eden Natan-Zada was an Israeli deserter soldier who opened fire in a bus in Shefa-Amr in northern Israel on 4 August 2005, killing four Arab citizens of Israel and wounding twelve others. He was restrained, disarmed and cuffed when he tried to reload to prepare for another round of shooting. After he was restrained and handcuffed, he was beaten to death by the crowd, as recorded on video. It has been inferred that the shooting was a personal protest against the Israeli government's disengagement plan, since an orange ribbon was found attached to Natan-Zada's pocket.
Jewish extremist terrorism is terrorism, including religious terrorism, committed by extremists within Judaism.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is an Israeli attorney, human rights activist, and the founder of Shurat HaDin – Israeli Law Center. As the president of the Shurat HaDin, she has represented hundreds of terror victims in legal actions against terror organizations and their supporters. Darshan-Leitner initiated a legal campaign to deprive terrorists of social media resources such as Facebook and Twitter. Darshan-Leitner assisted in blocking the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Mike Guzovsky, also known as Mike Guzofsky and Yekutiel Ben-Ya'acov, is an American-Israeli follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. He lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuach in the West Bank.
Events in the year 1990 in Israel.
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 earned a single seat in the Knesset in the 1984 election, after several electoral failures. However, it was barred from participating in the next election 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.
David Ha'ivri is an Israeli and an independent political strategist, who focuses on foreign relations, he has worked closely with Christian Zionists and leading politicians in Washington DC. He emigrated as a child with his family from the United States to Israel at the age of 11, completed high school, and served in the IDF. Ha'ivri is an Orthodox Jew, and lives with his wife and eight children in Kfar Tapuach in the West Bank. He is a religious Zionist leader, writer, and speaker. In November 2018 Ha'ivri was elected to the Shomron Regional Municipal council and in May 2021 he was elected as Second to the Chairman of the Council.
Ben-Zion "Bentzi" Gophstein is a political activist affiliated with the far-right in Israel, a student of Meir Kahane, and founder and director of Lehava, an Israeli Jewish anti-assimilation organization. He was a member of the Council of Kiryat Arba, 2010–2013. In November 2019, he was indicted on charges of incitement to terrorism, violence, and racism.
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.
Itamar Ben-Gvir is an Israeli lawyer and far-right extremist politician who has served as the Minister of National Security since 2022. He is a member of the Knesset and leader of Otzma Yehudit.
Meir Ettinger is an Israeli Kahanist activist and extremist who is known for leading the Hilltop Youth, a group that pursues the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, conducts punitive price tag attacks on Palestinian villages, and targets Muslim and Christian sites. Ettinger has called for the demolition of the secular state of Israel, and its replacement by a religious society based on Biblical principles.
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 considered sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. They named themselves after the ancient Sicarii rebels, a group of Jewish zealots who opposed Roman occupation of Judea.