Whenever there is a Palestinian terror attack or in the rare instances when a Muslim goes on the rampage here in the States, some Jews get on their high horse and denounce Islam as a religion of hate, etc. Now, Ori Nir of Peace Now has put together a useful compendium of Israeli Jewish terror. It should be noted that this is not a complete list as I noticed that the French-Israeli who murdered a Palestinian taxi driver a year ago or so is not included. The list also omits the latest Jewish terrorist, Jack Teitel:
1978 Yisrael Lederman, an IDF reservist, shot and killed a Palestinian civilian to avenge the murder of his friend, a day earlier, in East Jerusalem. He was released after serving only two years of his twenty-year prison sentence. In 1988 kidnapped a Palestinian baby and attacked an Israeli soldier. In 1996, he threw hot tea at Knesset Member Yael Dayan (Labor) in Hebron.
1982 Alan Goodman, a U.S. citizen, attacked Palestinians at al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, killed a Palestinian Waqf guard and injured several Israeli policemen. He served 15 years of his life sentence and was deported to the United States.
1980-1984 A large group of young settlers, who called themselves TNT (a Hebrew acronym for Counter-Terror Terror) and were referred to in the media as “The Jewish Underground,” set out to attack Palestinian leaders in the West Bank. They placed explosives on the cars of Palestinian mayors, shot and killed Palestinian students at a college in Hebron and plotted to blow up the mosques at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and to explode busses carrying Palestinian civilians. Several of the 29 members of the group went on to become leaders of the West Bank settler movement.
1983 Yonah Avrushmi, a Jerusalemite Jew, threw a hand grenade at a Peace Now demonstration near the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem. The blast killed Emil Grunzweig, one of Peace Now’s leaders, and injured nine others. Avrushmi was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was reduced and he is scheduled to be released in 2011.
1984 Yehuda Richter, a Kach activist, opened fire on a Palestinian bus in the West Bank and injured several of the passengers. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Others, who conspired with him to commit the crime, were sentenced to shorter prison terms. When he committed the attack, Richter was second on Meir Kahane’s Kach ticket for the 1984 Knesset election. After serving five years in prison, he became one of the leading teachers in yeshivas associated with the settlement movement.
1984 David Ben-Shimol, an IDF soldier, shot a rocket he stole from the IDF at a Palestinian bus in East Jerusalem, killing one Palestinian and injuring ten others.
1985 Danni Eisenman, a settler from Maale Adumim, and Michal Hillel, a student from Jerusalem, together with Gil Fuchs, a soldier, killed a Palestinian taxi driver on the road to Maale Adumim. Hillel served 5 years in prison, Fuchs 9 years, and Eisenman 11 years.
1989 Raphael Solomon, a student from the yeshiva at Joseph’s Tomb near Hebron, shot and killed two Palestinians at the Geha junction near Tel Aviv. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and served 4.
1990 Ami Popper, a 21 year old Israeli, shot and killed seven Gazan Palestinian day laborers in the Israeli town of Rishon le-Tzion, south of Tel Aviv. His attack prompted widespread riots in the West Bank and Gaza, in which several Palestinians were shot dead by the IDF.
1990 Arie Shlush, whose brother was killed by Palestinian terrorists earlier that year, shot in revenge at three Palestinian vehicles south of Bethlehem and injured three passengers.
1990 Nachshon Walls, an American-born settler and supporter of the Kach movement, shot at a Palestinian vehicle near Hebron, killing a 25 year old Palestinian woman. He was convicted of murder, but served only 13 years of his life sentence.
1992 Following the 1990 assassination in New York of the racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, a group of his supporters organized to avenge his killing forming a group called “The Revenge Patrol.” On the second anniversary of the killing, the four youngsters threw a hand grenade in Jerusalem’s Old City, killing one Palestinian and wounding many others.
1993 Yoram Shkolnick, a settler, drove by the settlement of Susia near Hebron, as a Palestinian terrorist was caught while allegedly trying to attack a kindergarten there. Shkolnick shot and killed the Palestinian, who was already handcuffed.
1994 Baruch Goldstein, a settler from Kiryat Arba near Hebron, shot and killed 29 Palestinian Muslims as they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron. 125 others were injured. The worshipers overpowered and killed him after he ran out of ammunition. His attack triggered a long and bloody series of Palestinian suicide bombings inside Israel.
1994 Daniel Morali, an Israeli whose brother was killed a year earlier, shot and killed a Palestinian truck driver inside Israel. He was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 2007.
1995 Yigal Amir, an Israeli student, assassinated Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the intention of derailing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He was sentenced to life in prison.
1996 Ehud Bart, an Israeli settler, attempted to push the vehicle of then-Minister Yossi Sarid into an abyss. He was sentenced but did not serve a prison term.
1997 Noam Friedman, an Israeli soldier who was later found to be mentally disturbed and unfit to stand trial, came to Hebron to shoot Palestinians. He opened fire in the center of town and injured seven Palestinians before being overpowered by IDF soldiers.
1998 Gur Hammel, an Israeli settler from Itamar, used a rock to shatter the head of an elderly Palestinian man while on a hike near the village of Beit Fourik, near Nablus. The attack was apparently unprovoked. He is serving a life sentence.
2000 Danny Tikman, an IDF soldier on leave, shot at the fronts of stores owned by Arab citizens of Israel. He injured four people and damaged property. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
2001 A Jewish terrorist organization called “Shalhevet Gilad,” apparently operating out of settlements near Hebron, set out to avenge the murder of a Jewish baby, Shlhevet Pass, by a Palestinian sharpshooter in Hebron. Three shooting attacks against Palestinians, in which one Palestinian was killed and seven injured, were attributed to this organization.
2001-2002 A group of Israelis, three of them settlers from the settlement of Bat-Ayin in the southern West Bank, was arrested and charged with a series of attacks against Palestinians. The suspects, who were arrested after attempting to plant a bomb at a girls’ school in East Jerusalem, initially admitted to several attacks against Palestinians, in which eight Palestinian civilians – including a baby – were murdered. They later withdrew their confessions. Three were convicted of attempting to kill schoolgirls in East Jerusalem and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Others received lighter sentences.
2002 Several settlers were arrested and tried for planning terrorist attacks against Palestinians and possessing weapons to carry out attacks. Their plans were foiled by Israeli law enforcement authorities.
2002-2004 Eliran Golan, an Israeli Jew from the city of Haifa, planted several homemade bombs in Haifa, targeting local Arab citizens. One of the bombs, planted in a mosque in the predominantly Arab Halisa neighborhood in Haifa, killed an Arab worshipper. Another bomb targeted Israeli Knesset Member Issam Makhoul but failed to harm Makhoul. Golan’s arrest led to the arrest of his friend, Alexander Rabinowitz, an IDF soldier, who supplied Golan with military explosives. Golan committed suicide in prison.
2005 Eden Natan-Zadah, a settler from Tapuah, south of Nablus, who was AWOL from the IDF, shot at passengers of an Israeli Egged bus in the Israeli Arab town Shafa-‘Amr (Shfaram) killing four Arab citizens of Israel and injuring nine others. Passengers overpowered him and killed him.
2006 Asher Vizgan, a driver of a workers’ van from the settlement of Shvut Rachel, shot Palestinian laborers who he transported, as well as others at the adjacent industrial zone of Shilo. He killed four and injured one Palestinian. He was sentenced to life in prison and committed suicide in his prison cell.
Let us never as Jews believe that we have a monopoly on righteousness or that our so-called religious enemies are wholly evil. We are neither better nor worse than they.
And this list does not even include Jewish terrorism in the United States, such as the activities of the JDL, including the murder by bomb of Alex Odeh in California. And what actually happened in the case of that guy in Florida who was planning out massacres at local mosques? Oddly, these types of things are never given the kind of serious attention given to even the silliest allegations against Muslims.
And Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip are subjected to state terrorism committed by their occupiers every day. The Jewish State makes nightly raids in the West Bank, arresting Palestinians in the wee hours (not in the daylight, but under cover of darkness). During Operation Cast Lead IDF soldiers made forays into Arab neighborhoods, pounding on doors, smashing windows and bullying residents. The airspace over Gaza is daily filled with the sight and sounds of Israeli fighter planes and drones.
Children are shot for throwing stones at soldiers and for getting too close to the separation wall. If this isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what you would call it.
And do not forget Israel’s multiple daily violations of Lebanese territory on land and in the air, many of them clearly intended only to terrorize the Lebanese population.
I was amused to read today that the Lebanese government has voted to allow Hizbullah to keep their weapons.
LOL! Typical silly Lebanese behaviour – and I say that with affection. Realizing there is absolutely no way they can disarm Hezballah they make it official policy to “allow” them to be armed. And the funniest part is that they seem to think no one sees through this.
Lebanon’s army is no match for Israel. They need Hizbullah’s army. Hizbullah is another instance of an artificially created “terrorist organization.” Israel is very successful at persuading the world to designate all its enemies as terrorists.
Mary, I will never forget that in 2006 while Israel was pounding the crap out of Lebanese cities, destroying schools, orphanages, and strafing columns of civilians whom they had ordered to evacuate their villages, members of the Lebanese military were serving tea and sitting down for nice chats with officers of the invading army. Lebanese “leaders” by and large are only out for themselves, and will do whatever it takes at any given moment to serve their own self-centered interests .
Yes, that’s true. I had almost a front row seat (not literally) to the Odeh murder & have written about that here.
It is an outrage that they know with some certainty who committed this clear act of terrorism, and yet no one has been prosecuted for it, nor will they ever be prosecuted.
Even more outrageous is the clear double standard when it comes to charging Jews with terrorism or even hate crimes. For example, as I recall in the Florida case of Robert J. Goldstein authorities refused to charge him with either, despite the fact that they found in his home detailed plans for a deadly attack on a local “Islamic education center; fifteen or so bombs; the makings for 30 or so more bombs; 30-40 weapons, including a .50 caliber sniper rifle along with a number of semiautomatic weapons; and a list of fifty local mosques and Islamic centers. Needless to say if it had been a Muslim or an Arab, and the targets had been Jewish centers, he and his case would have been treated very, very differently indeed.
It is almost as though it has gone beyond a double standard to the point where it is believed that Muslims cannot possibly be the targets of terrorism in the US; on the other hand, a mentally deranged army major who happens to be a Muslim goes berserk and kills 13 people, and the first thing thing that comes to everyone’s mind is the question of whether he is a member of al Qaeda.
I imagine there was political pressure in the Goldstein case that quashed the terrorism charges.
I don’t remember reading about this story. Could you get me a link?
Richard, here is the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Goldstein
The entire history of Israel is a TERRORIST ACT.
I would not go that far, but it certainly is correct to say that the Zionists introduced terrorism into the region, and pioneered a number of terror methods, including airplane hijacking, vehicle bombs, and letter and package bombs. It is also correct to say that Israel uses terrorist techniques to control the populations it holds under occupation.
Don’t forget how they tried to kill Khalid Meshal by dropping poison into his ear, and how they use “targeted assassinations,” namely, air strikes which not only take out the intended victim but a lot of innocent bystanders. They also bomb the Gaza tunnels frequently, and the mosques while there are innocent worshippers inside.
RE: “…useful compendium of Israeli Jewish terror…”
ALSO SEE: “Alex Odeh, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”
(excerpts) Alex Odeh (April 4, 1944 – October 11, 1985) was an Arab-American anti-discrimination activist who was killed in a bombing as he opened the door of his office at 1905 East 17th Street, Santa Ana, California. Odeh was west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)…Born into a Palestinian Christian family in Jifna, the West Bank, Odeh immigrated to the US in 1972.[1] He was a lecturer and poet who recently had published a volume of his poetry, Whispers in Exile.[2] The Boston office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee suffered a bombing on August 16, 1985, injuring two officers.[3] The Santa Ana bombing came the day after the ending of the Achille Lauro incident where Jewish American Leon Klinghoffer was killed…
…Four weeks after Odeh’s death, FBI spokesperson Lane Bonner stated the FBI attributed the bombing and two others to the JDL…In February 1986, the FBI classified the bombing that killed Alex Odeh as a terrorist act…Immediately after the 1985 assassination the FBI identified three suspects, all of them believed to be affiliated with the JDL, who fled to Israel. In 1987 it was revealed that Israel was hindering the FBI investigation. Floyd Clarke, then assistant director of the FBI, claimed in an internal memo that key suspects had fled to Israel and were living in the West Bank town of Kiryat Arba. In 1988, the FBI arrested Rochelle Manning as a suspect in a mail bombing which killed a secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, in Manhattan Beach, California. It also charged her husband, Robert Manning, who they considered a prime suspect in the Odeh bombing. Both were members of the JDL. Rochelle’s jury deadlocked, and after the mistrial she left for Israel to join her husband. Robert Manning was extradited from Israel to the U.S. in 1993.[4] He is serving a life sentence on that charge.[10]..
…In 2007, the FBI revealed they had received information from a deceased informant, believed to be former Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel who had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for 2001 plots to bomb a Southern California mosque and office of an Arab American congressman. It is believed that Irv Rubin, who died in prison while awaiting trial on the same charges, revealed to Krugel the names of those responsible for Odeh’s death and Krugel shared those with the FBI before he, too, died in prison. The bombers are believed to be Manning and two individuals now living in Israel.[13]
WIKIPEDIA SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Odeh
Richard, there was also the case of this settler who crushed a boy’s head with the butt of his rifle. I don’t recall the details right now, but it can be easily Google-searched.
Also, settler rampages should also be counted, no?
Finally, Jewish terrorism wasn’t born with the state of Israel. I always make the point that the Palestinians must be compared to what the Jews did when they didn’t have a state. And when the Jews didn’t have a state, they blew up markets, hotels and movie theaters. I published a few newspaper clippings from those years with the horrifying details here and here.
Yes, indeed. Settler rampages should certainly be counted. As I mentioned this is a list that Ori Nir of Peace Now prepared off the top of his head without doing a lot of research. It is not meant to be exhaustive. But by all means pls. add any incidents that are omitted which involve attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israeli non-military forces.
I have a long essay I wrote for the London Review of Books which they never published (a story for another time) on the subject of pre-state violence and post-1948 violence in Zionist history. I’ve been meaning to publish it here since it appears unlikely any other publication will be interested in publishing a 3,000 word essay.
2002: Rampaging Israelis shot dead a 14-year-old Palestinian girl and wounded nine other civilians yesterday while returning from the funeral of a Jewish settler in the volatile West Bank town of Hebron.
1996: Settler Nahum Korman killed an 11-year-old boy by kicking him in the head and hitting him with the butt of his rifle. He was sentenced to 6 months community service plus a fine of 70,000 shekels.
2005: Settlers stabbed a 12-year-old boy to death after ambushing him near his home at Qaryot village outside the Palestinian-ruled city of Nablus. He was stabbed 11 times, medics said.
It is up to us, I think, to get that kind of information out there, because the mainstream media certainly isn’t doing it. I just read another NY Times editorial criticizing Obama’s diplomacy blunders. It said that Obama had demanded, among other things, that “Palestinians crack down on anti-Israel violence.” It crossed my mind that nothing was mentioned as to Israel cracking down on anti-Palestinian violence. Palestinians experience terrorism on a daily basis, but this goes largely unmentioned in the news.
2001: Settlers from a self-styled Road Safety Group killed Mohammed Salameh Etnizi, 22, Mohammed Hilmy Etnizi, 20, and three-month-old Wael Etnizi in a drive-by shooting in the village of Idna, west of Hebron. The car with the attackers ran an army roadblock and escaped into Israel.
2001: A Palestinian man died after his car overturned when a stone was thrown through his front windshield by Israeli settlers.
2002: Settlers killed one Palestinian and wounded two others during an attack on olive harvesters near Nablus.
Sorry; the incident “2005: Settlers stabbed a 12-year-old boy to death after ambushing him near his home at Qaryot village outside the Palestinian-ruled city of Nablus. He was stabbed 11 times, medics said” that I quoted above seems to have been inaccurately reported. Further investigation suggested it was his cousin who stabbed him.
It’s important not to make mistakes in these lists, because Israel apologists will seize on them to cast doubt on all of the incidents.
A confirmed one:
2004: A Jewish settler fatally shot a Palestinian taxi driver on a road outside the city of Nablus.
More Jewish terror attacks:
http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties_Data.asp?Category=3®ion=TER
2009: An Arab man in his forties was stabbed in the stomach by a Jewish youth in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot Eshkol, near the Rene Cassin school.
How about the attack on USS Liberty on June 8th 1967 by unmarked Israeli jets causing the deaths of 34 US servicemen? Or was that an accident?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
And who can forget the massacre at Shatila and Sabra in 1982 where under the watch of the IDF, an estimated of several thousand Palestinians were murdered by the Phalangist militia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
According to the Israelis, the USS Liberty was an accident.
And they claim they didn’t participate in the Shabra and Shatila massacre, although they facilitated the killing by providing the Phalangists with floodlights so that they could slaughter the people in the dark. One of Ariel Sharon’s proud moments.
The attack on the USS Liberty wasn’t really terrorism. It was actually an act of war.
It can be both. After all, Bush said 9/11 was an act of war, too.
The attack on the USS Liberty just doesn’t fit the definition of terrorism. The objective of the attack was not to use violence or threats of violence against civilians in order to bring about political change. The Israeli military attacked a target that was essentially military with the apparent objective of stopping its intelligence gathering activities.
Bush and others who say 9/11 was an act of war are quite simply wrong. Acts of war are committed by states against states, not by tiny groups of fanatic wack jobs from several different countries acting on behalf of their own grievances and/or ideologies. Declaring 9/11 an act of war was a politically convenient misrepresentation. 9/11 was a crime committed by a gang of criminals, not an act of war. It was also an act of terrorism.
Shirin, as you know, the definition of the word “terrorism” has become so blurred and so manipulated that it has been used to describe everything from mass shootings by berserk mental cases to armed resistance by groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas. It is a politicized word whose meaning changes with the wind.
Bush wanted 9/11 to be an act of war so that he could launch his “war on terror” followed by his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Traditionally, acts of war were committed by states against each other; that just isn’t true anymore. Semantics has played a big part in the international discourse.
Terrorist acts are, simply, meant to instill terror in the general population as well as in the government structure. The nature of terrorism is to attack the innocent, the unsuspecting and the defenseless. States can and do engage in terrorism, as we know. I can think of a couple of them right off the top of my head.
The US called the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut 25 years ago a terrorist attack, although it was an attack on a military installation. Was it indeed a terrorist act, or was it an act of war?
http://www.strimoo.com/video/15520956/Ward-Churchill-on-CNN-par-BrouhaJoe-MySpaceVideos.html
Ward Churchill makes some sailent points about state terrorism vs. 9-11.
The word terrorism has specific legal definitions, which are generally pretty consistent. When we accept others’ propagandistic and/or sloppy and overly broad use of words and terms such as terrorism (and rape, and anti-Semitism, and racism) we are acquiescing to their dishonest and destructive agendas. I, for one refuse to do this, and in my opinion so should we all. Therefore, I simply do not accept its usage to cover “everything from mass shootings by berserk mental cases to armed resistance by groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas”, nor do I believe its actual meaning “changes with the wind”.
Here is how terrorism is defined in U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d) as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents usually intended to influence an audience.””
The U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary defines terrorism as “The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”
The fact that its usage by politicians, ideologues, and propagandists, and parroted by media talking heads bears little resemblance to these definitions does not alter the real meaning of the word.
The attack on the USS Liberty does not fit any part of any legitimate definition of terrorism that I have ever seen.
An act of war is defined as “an act of aggression by a country against another with which it is nominally at peace.
War is defined as “a contest between two or more independent nations carried on by authority of their respective governments.”
The 9/11 attacks do not fit any part of those definitions, but they do fit the definitions of terrorism very well.
The fact that words are deceptively used for political or propagandistic purposes, or that language can be sloppily used does not oblige us to join in. On the contrary, it obliges us to do the exact opposite.
Here is the legal definition of act of war:
“an action by one country against another with an intention to provoke a war or an action that occurs during a declared war or armed conflict between military forces of any origin. The loss or damage caused due to such conflicts are excluded from insurance coverage except for life assurances.”
As you can see, regardless of what George Bush claims, 9/11 does not fit at all.
On the topic of 9-11, an American radio programme (Democracy Now) did a coverage on the possibility of Israel’s prior knowledge of the attacks on that fateful day.
It is worth listening to:
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2007/feb/video/dnB20070208a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:44:45
With all due respect, this angle on 9/11 is ludicrous & I don’t have any interest in propounding such conspiracy theories.
Thank you Richard, I totally agree. I don’t believe anyone had prior knowledge of anything. Prior stupidity and willful ignorance, yes; knowledge, no. 9/11 will always remain fodder for conspiracy theorists.
I agree that the various conspiracy theories suggesting that Israel had prior knowledge or even was in on it, or possibly even more absurdly that the whole thing was plotted and executed by the GWB administration do not hold water. On the other hand Netanyahu’s public comments that 9/11 was “very good for Israel” certainly help feed the conspiracists (did I just make up a new word?), though in my mind what those remarks really do is tell us everything we need to know about Netanyahu and his ilk.
Shirin, you read my mind. I was just thinking that whether Netanyahu’s remarks were taken out of context or not, they’re reprehensible. The sad thing is that the Israeli people don’t realize what a liability Netanyahu really is.
The anti-semitic conspiracy nuts really went to town after that. It’s an interesting example of how Zionism feeds anti-Semitism.
Yes, someone I know who made aliyah, said after 9/11 that this event would finally allow Americans to know what it’s like to be an Israeli & would finally bring America fully to Israel’s side. I said to myself chas v’halila (God forbid), but didn’t say that to him.
How does one define acts by a nation’s government that are covert, and intended to destabilize other political entities, which may or may not be nation-states? Acts which often result in terrorizing populations, with that result being intended.
Those acts should be defined as violations of international law, I would think.
The CIA has committed such acts many times, all over the world.
If Jews/Israelis need to do any breast-beating in this department it is that Israel does not value the lives of it’s own citizens enough to deal with terror with a heavy hand. Instead of the revolving door policy of releasing prisoners sentenced to multiple life sentences in exchanges, terrorists convincted of heinous crimes, serial murders of innocents should be uniquely given a public death sentence.
Wow, Ben Zion Netanyahu arisen from the dead, stalks the earth and my comment threads once more…