This is very scary - what I don't understand is why these people were released from detention. Surely, if they had been Palestinians threatening Jews, they would not be "freed with limitations," and not face charges "on the grounds that they had been unable to implement their plan and had decided not to carry it out." Doesn't that suggest that they might try to figure out some other way to implement their plans. The police and Shin Bet also said "there was not enough evidence to charge them." When has that stopped the police and Shin Bet when it comes to Palestinian threats to Israeli security?
The reactions by two right-wing MKs also strike me as very peculiar responses to the arrests:
In response to the reports, MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said, "This is a clear attempt to stain a loyal and law-abiding community struggling justly and fairly for its values."
The chairman of the National Union Knesset faction, Zvi Hendel, accused the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur, as it had done with Avishai Raviv prior to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Does Uriel really think that planning to lob an anti-tank missile at the Temple Mount is part of a "just struggle"? And what does Hendel mean by accusing the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur. Who is the provocateur in this case?
I certainly hope the Shin Bet is keeping an eye on these men and their associates!
Rebecca, don't you get it? The whole thing was bullshit to make the right-wing look bad. Of course they would have held them in administrative detention if there was even the slightest slightest chance that there was any actual threat. The Israeli government has held tons of Jews in administrative detention before, and certainly over something like THIS?!
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they were immideately released is clearly owing to the fact that the charges were nothing but a way to make the right wing look nuts - and evil - so the majority of Israelis, not to mention the world, will feel no sympathy for them when they're forcibly removed from their homes.
And this is Exactly what the Israeli government did when Oslo was going on and most of the country was against it. The GSS got a guy name Avishai Raviv to create a group called Eyal and do all sorts of insane things.
Raviv gathered around himself the nuttiest people he could find and they went around beating up arabs, claiming crdit for murder of arabs (this when some arab clan dressed up as israeli soldiers and invaded a village of other arabs, beat people up and killed someone - in the morning when the newsreporters were trying to figure out what the hell happened, the group Eyal claimed responsibility - later in the day the true story came out that it wasn't jews at all, but Raviv's job was to make orthodox settlers look like evil koocs).
Israeli television also showed scary video scenes of Eyal's secret swearing in ceremony...and all this was the Israeli left wing government.
Eventually the program was So successful that Rabin was killed - by Yigal Amir, a member in good standing of Eyal, personally trained and indoctrinated by Raviv.
None of this is made up and none of this is denied by Anyone.
And that's what took place with the "blowing up of the temple mount" bullshit.
Apropos, check out this post, around three months old which sort of predicted the matter. It might be written by an orthodox guy, but no moron, this (somewhat anonymous) fellow is actually a well-known and highly respected Israeli professor.
http://benchorin.blogspot.com/2005/03/westerners-tend-to-imagine-that-non.html#comments