Israel
has arrested Meir Ettinger, who tops the Shin Bet internal security
organisation’s list of most-wanted Jewish extremists, for alleged involvement
in “criminal nationalist activity”.
Ettinger,
the 24-year-old grandson of late Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, is
scheduled to appear before a court in the northern town of Nazareth to have his
remand extended, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said on Tuesday. Samri
said that he was arrested on Monday.
Kahane was
the founder of the ultra-right Kach party, which was outlawed by Israel as a
terrorist organisation in the 1980s.
He was
shot dead by Arab gunmen in a New York hotel in 1990.
The Y-net
news site published a document in which Ettinger purportedly advocated
attacking Palestinians and vandalising sensitive Muslim and Christian holy
sites, in order to create a major “revolution” and bring down the state of
Israel.
Ettinger
has been arrested multiple times in the past and served restraining orders
banning him from entering the West Bank.
He had
been living in Safed, northern Israel.
New
measures approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet could
mean that prosecutors have more success in keeping him behind bars.
Among
others, the security cabinet authorised administrative detention orders for
Jewish extremists.
Commonly
used against Palestinian militants, meanwhile administrative detention allows
the arrest of a person deemed a security risk, even before he commits a crime.
Attorney
Yuval Zemer slammed the arrest as a “public relations” stunt, in the wake of an
arson attack in a northern West Bank village that killed an 18-month-old and
critically injured his parents and his 4-year-old brother. (NAN)
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