[NYTr] Russian Emigre Neo-Nazi Gang Caught in Israel After Attacks

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Israel's apartheid laws bite back:  the case illustrates "the absurdity
of Israeli laws which give extensive rights to newcomers from Russia
while denying them to Arab residents who had lived in the region for
generations." -NY Transfer]


The Guardian - Sep 10, 1007 via rick kissell
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Israeli neo-Nazi ring caught after attacks on synagogues

by Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem

Police in Israel have uncovered a neo-Nazi ring which was responsible 
for vandalising synagogues and carrying out attacks on Jews and foreign 
workers in Israel, a court was told yesterday.

The group of eight Russian immigrants aged between 18 and 21 appeared in 
court following an 18-month investigation into attacks on two synagogues 
in which swastikas were painted on the walls of the buildings. The men 
covered their heads with their shirts during the hearing, revealing arms 
tattooed with Nazi imagery.

More than a million people from the former Soviet Union have emigrated 
to Israel, which has a population of seven million, since 1990, taking 
advantage of Israel's Law of Return which allows anyone to claim 
citizenship if they have a Jewish grandparent. Many of the new 
immigrants have little connection to Judaism and emigrated for economic 
reasons.

Many Russians live in large communities in Israel's cities in which they 
have little interaction with other Israelis.

They have their own supermarkets where pork is available, unlike in the 
majority of stores. Russians feel they are victims of discrimination in 
Israel and many are denied the right to marry by the Jewish authorities. 
Police named the leader of the neo-Nazi gang as Eli Boanitov, 19, from 
Petah Tikvah, a city next to Tel Aviv.

Boanitov, who was known as "Eli the Nazi", told police: "I won't ever 
give up. I was a Nazi and I will stay a Nazi, until we kill them all I 
will not rest." In one conversation recorded by the police, Boanitov 
tells one of his fellow gang members: "My grandfather was a half-Jewboy. 
I will not have children so that this trash will not be born with even a 
tiny per cent of Jewboy blood."

During the investigation, police seized video recordings of the suspects 
attacking foreign workers. One of the videos shows the gang members 
attacking a Russian drug addict, striking him until he bled and forcing 
him to ask forgiveness of the Russian people for being a Jewish drug addict.

The search also revealed photographs of the suspects wearing Nazi 
clothing, using the Nazi salute and calling for the burning of Jews. 
Explosive materials were found in the home of one of the suspects.

Police also found recordings of conversations between gang members, in 
one they planned how to celebrate the Führer's birthday, and in another 
they planned a Nazi ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in 
Jerusalem.

The Anti Defamation League, a New York-based group that fights 
anti-Semitism, praised the arrest of the neo-Nazis but warned Israelis 
not to stigmatise the whole Russian community for the actions of a few 
members.

"The suspicion that immigrants to Israel could have been acting in 
praise of Nazis and Hitler is anathema to the Jewish state and is to be 
repelled," the organisation said in a statement. "Members of the group 
were reportedly from the former Soviet Union and were religiously 
identified as Christians.

"They were allowed to immigrate to Israel on the basis of law of return 
which grants even grandchildren of Jews sanctuary in the Jewish state.

"The tragic irony in this is that they would have been chosen for 
annihilation by the Nazis they strive to emulate." The ADL said that the 
phenomenon appeared to be marginal and was more a reaction to 
anti-Russian discrimination in Israel.

Israeli politicians reacted with anger to the revelations and proposed 
several changes in the law to prevent a repeat of neo-Nazi actions. Effi 
Eitam of the National Religious Party said he would propose a bill in 
the Knesset that would restrict the rights of non-Jews to emigrate to 
Israel.

Ahmed Tibi, an Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, said that the case 
illustrated the absurdity of Israeli laws which give extensive rights to 
newcomers from Russia while denying them to Arab residents who had lived 
in the region for generations.