Jack Teitel’s legal defense team presents some interesting characters from the extreme settler movement. According to the Rosh Pina Project (full disclosure: this is a site affiliated with Messianic Jews), Teitel is being represented by Ami Kedar, who is linked to Honenu. This group encourages IDF soldiers to defy military orders in enforcing discipline against settlers, including during the Gaza evacuation. It defends IDF soldiers accused or convicted of crimes against Palestinian civilians. It also raises funds for wonderful specimens of humanity like Rabin assassin, Yigal Amir:
Who or what is Honenu?
It is an Israeli legal group which campaigns for the release of Jewish murderers from Israeli jails when Arab murderers are released. They are headed up by Shmuel Meidad, known in right-wing circles as ‘Zangi.’ Meidad has previously spent time in prison, as has Ariel Groner, responsible for handling prisoner affairs in Honenu, who was arrested in 2006 and spent three months under house arrest. Groner was recently arrested after he was noticed handing out leaflets inciting violence against homosexuals, as was Teitel.
A Haaretz reporter quotes this justification for the mindset of Jewish terrorists:
As far as Hanenu is concerned, it [Jewish terror] derives from “mistaken judgment against a background of compromised security, or personal factors related to judgment and the sense that one needs to exact revenge.”
Honenu had the chutzpah to attempt to piggyback onto the Gilad Shalit negotiation, demanding that if Palestinian militants were freed by Israel that Jewish terrorists should be as well. I kid you not. There should be a special place in hell reserved for chutzpaniks like this. For someone not involved in the day to day politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even for the average Israeli such outrageousness appears to be little more than that: strange behavior from a ragtag group of far-right extremists. People don’t understand the real implications of these views and the danger they pose for the greater society.
The Teitel family was also defended by Nadia Matar of Women in Green. Interestingly, Phil Weiss offered a recording of Matar speaking at a New York synagogue during a fundraising event, during which she advocated assassinating Mahmoud Abbas.
These are not harmless, slightly aberrant individuals playing out their delusions on a small stage. These are individuals planting the seeds of destruction of the secular Israel state. They can’t achieve their aims alone. But taken together with the internal divisions and contradictions within Israeli society itself, these people pose a real and present danger to the State. They have never been confronted with the full force of state authority. Hell, the State often aids, abets and encourages them. That’s the reason why Teitel could run rampant for 12 years without detection.
For more on the nexus between Judean settlers extremists and American Jewish tax-exempt groups like the Moskowitz Foundation, read Max Blumenthal’s eye-opening post. The U.S. tax-exempt Central Fund for Israel has made contributions to Honenu (page 18), meaning that your tax dollars and mine are indirectly subsidizing a group that defends Jewish terror.
If I were Teitel I’d ask for sanctuary in Israel….errrr….wait a minute.