Grandson of ultra-nationalist arrested for involvement in Jewish underground
The arrest came as the government approved harsher measures against Jewish extremists following a firebomb attack that killed a Palestinian baby in the West Bank village of Duma on Friday.
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, BEN HARTMANUpdated: AUGUST 4, 2015 03:29Police arrest Meir Ettinger(photo credit: TAZPIT)
The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Judea and Samaria Central police unit on Monday arrested far-right figure Meir Ettinger “due to his involvement and activities in extremist Jewish organizations.”Ettinger, the grandson of Meir Kahane, who has an order banning him from the West Bank and Jerusalem, is a resident of Safed.A security source said Ettinger is suspected of being part of an “extremist infrastructure,” but declined to say whether the arrest had any direct link to the deadly arson attack on a Palestinian home in the village of Duma last week.In a blog post published July 30 on the Hakol Heyehudi (Jewish Voice) website responding to the Shin Bet arrest of suspected arsonists behind the June attack on the Church of Loaves and Fishes in the North, Ettinger wrote: “The truth is I don’t know what the Shin Bet wanted me to organize... this impulse of the Shin Bet to create an atmosphere and make up displays as if there is an ‘organization’ that it exposes, explains to us well what the Shin Bet understands so well and is so afraid of... the Shin Bet understands that the activities they chase after...simply grow out of the ground from the most basic and popular understandings that cause people to feel that they need to do something.”He added: “There is no terrorist organization, but there are lots and lots of Jews, much more than what they think, whose ladder of values is completely different from that of the High Court of Justice or the Shin Bet.”Meanwhile, a man arrested last Friday and banned from Facebook for writing a post praising the stabbing attack at the Jerusalem Pride Parade was rearrested on Monday after he sent out another post on WhatsApp in which he expressed joy at the passing of a teenage girl who was stabbed during the attack.The man, Gilad Kleiner of Kiryat Malachi was released Friday with the condition that he stay off Facebook for the week. The judge’s condition did not include WhatsApp, so on Sunday afternoon he sent out a text to around 100 friends on WhatsApp in which he said., “I was very pleased to hear this past hour about the passing of the stabbing victim from the abomination march held last Thursday.”Kleiner’s message then says how he was pleased because he felt so bad for the attacker Yishai Schlissel because he was set to go away to prison for many years “without even succeeding in killing a single one of these perverted souls.”Klenier, the son of former Herut and Likud MK Michael Kleiner will be brought to the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, where he is expected to receive further restrictions on his release.The State Prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, ordered a criminal investigation against suspects believed to have uploaded videos to YouTube showing President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing Nazi uniforms and speaking in German. The investigation will be carried out by the cyber unit of the Israel Police, which on Sunday opened an investigation into online incitement against Rivlin, following his statements condemning violence and hatred after the pride parade attack and murder of a Palestinian baby in a firebombing in the West Bank Thursday night, that is believed to have been carried out by Jewish extremists.