Posted By Amina Anderson

September 14, 2007

Sixty years after Israel established a country to ensure that Jews would never suffer another Holocaust, the Jewish state nabbed a group of young immigrants from the former Soviet Union who allegedly formed a neo-Nazi cell. The discovery of the cell came as a shock to a country that doesn’t even have a law against neo-Nazi activity. 

The Eight immigrants, aged between 16 and 21, are being held over 15 assaults on Orthodox Jews, foreign workers and other minority groups. Police said a ninth youth had fled the country. It’s been reported that the group, whose alleged leader was named as Eli Buanitov, filmed themselves carrying out hate crimes, wearing neo-Nazi insignia and slogans and proclaiming their allegiance to Adolf Hitler. They are to be charged with causing bodily harm, illegally possessing weapons and denying the Holocaust.

According to the New Zealand Tribune, one of the young men was Jewish. The rest were admitted under Israel’s "law of return", which grants citizenship to anybody who is Jewish or has at least one Jewish grandparent and allows entry permits to the families of gentiles married to Jews. That law allowed the more than one million immigrants, many with tenuous ties to Judaism, to move to Israel in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Undercover police began tracking the neo-Nazi cell after two synagogues in the Tel Aviv town of Petah Tikva were desecrated. Internal and external walls were spray-painted with swastikas, as well as "Heil Hitler" and "Death to the Jews" graffiti.

Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the suspects had filmed themselves beating 15 ultra-Orthodox Jews, foreign workers, homosexuals, homeless people, drunks and drug addicts. He added that the eight used to meet every few days and decide who and where to attack next. 

Detectives who raided their homes found the films and a photograph of one of the group brandishing an M-16 assault rifle. They also confiscated knives, an improvised pistol, TNT, wires and detonators.

Searches of their computers and video cassettes revealed links to racist groups in Germany and the United States. Detectives also found an email message on Eli Buanitov’s computer saying: “I won't have kids. My grandfather is half Yid, so that this piece of trash won't have ancestors with even the smallest per cent of Jewish blood."

In another file, he was quoted as writing: "I will never give up. I was a Nazi and will remain a Nazi. I won't rest until we kill them all."

Superintendent Revital Almog, who leads the investigation, said: "The level of violence was outrageous." 

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, also spoke of his outrage after seeing the footage at a cabinet meeting. "We saw the appalling documentation of violence for its own sake. We as a society have failed in educating these youths and distancing them from crazy and dangerous ideologies."

The discovery of Israel’s first violent Nazi cell has shocked Israelis and triggered calls for the government to change its immigration policy and to outlaw neo-Nazi and other hate crimes. There have also been calls for the law to be changed to permit the revocation of Israeli citizenship and deportation for neo-Nazis. According to the BBC, the Israeli statute outlaws denial of the Holocaust, but not neo-Nazi behaviour. 

"We obviously have to change immigration policies, not to take in everyone who wants to come," says Zalman Gilichenski, of the Information Centre for Victims of Anti-Semitism, an NGO. 

Gilichenski adds that neo-Nazi behaviour among some immigrants is encouraged by links they maintain with racist groups in Russia. “There are other groups like these in almost every city in Israel," he told the BBC. "In Russia, a day doesn't pass without a racist murder, and these youths are very connected to their friends in Russia (through the internet) and they learn from them; they even videotape their attacks." 

But many Israeli officials warn against tough measures. Michael Jankelowitz, of the Jewish Agency, which is responsible for immigration to Israel, said the Petah Tikva case arises from an internal Israeli problem with the education system. "Immigrants from the former Soviet Union have changed the face of Israel," Mr Jankelowitz told the BBC. "They have made an enormous contribution in the fields of medicine, hi-tech, science and the arts," he says. 

It remains to be seen whether Israel would rethink its immigration policy or not, particularly because it would be against the state of Israel's strategic interests as the Jewish state needs to encourage immigration because of the demographic challenge it faces from the growing Israeli Arab and Palestinian population.

©  EsinIslam.Com

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