Jewish terrorism
Encyclopedia
Jewish religious terrorism is a type of religious terrorism
committed by extremists of Judaism
.
and Lehi
as good examples of Jewish terrorism based on ethnic grounds.
was one of the first examples of the use of terrorism by Jews. They sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province
to rebel against the Roman Empire
and expel it from the Holy land
by force of arms. The term Zealot, in Hebrew
kanai
, means one who is zealous on behalf of God. The most extremist groups of Zealots were called Sicarii
. Sicarii used violent stealth tactics against Romans. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae, or small daggers, from which they received their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount
, they stabbed their enemies (Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians
), lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. In one account, given in the Talmud
, Sicarii destroyed the city's food supply so that the people would be forced to fight against the Roman siege instead of negotiating peace. Sicarii also raided Jewish habitations and killed fellow Jews whom they considered apostate and collaborators.
It has been suggested that a striking similarity between the Jewish groups, and jihad networks in Western democracies is their alienation and isolation from the values of the majority, mainstream culture, which they view as an existential threat to their own community. Other similarities between these groups are that their terrorist ideology is not exclusively religious, as it attempts to achieve political, territorial and nationalistic goals as well, e.g. the disruption of the Camp David accords. However, the newer of these Jewish groups have tended to emphasise religious motives for their actions at the expense of secular ones. In the case of Jewish terrorism most networks consist of religious Zionists and ultra-orthodox Jews living in isolated, homogenous communities.
The following groups have been considered religious terrorist organizations in Israel:
Religious terrorism
Religious terrorism is terrorism by those whose motivations and aims have a predominant religious character or influence.In the modern age, after the decline of ideas such as the divine right of kings and with the rise of nationalism, terrorism more often involved anarchism, nihilism and...
committed by extremists of Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
.
Terminology
Some researches on ethnic terrorism distinguish between ethnic terrorism and religious terrorism, but admit that the distinction between these forms of terrorism is often blurred in practice. Daniel Bymen, in his study on "The Logic of ethnic terrorism", argues that Jews operate far more as an ethnic group than as a community motivated by and organized according to religious doctrine. The author sees Jewish underground groups IrgunIrgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
and Lehi
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...
as good examples of Jewish terrorism based on ethnic grounds.
Zealotry in the 1st century
According to Mark Burgess, the 1st century Jewish political and religious movement called ZealotryZealotry
Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt...
was one of the first examples of the use of terrorism by Jews. They sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province
Iudaea Province
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
to rebel against the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
and expel it from the Holy land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
by force of arms. The term Zealot, in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
kanai
Kanai (Judaism)
-The first kanai:The first kanai mentioned in the Tanach is Pinchas. Pinchas was rewarded by God for his zealotry because he didn't act out of hate or for any personal gain...
, means one who is zealous on behalf of God. The most extremist groups of Zealots were called Sicarii
Sicarii
Sicarii is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea using concealed daggers .-History:The Sicarii used...
. Sicarii used violent stealth tactics against Romans. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae, or small daggers, from which they received their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount
Temple Mount
The Temple Mount, known in Hebrew as , and in Arabic as the Haram Ash-Sharif , is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been used as a religious site for thousands of years...
, they stabbed their enemies (Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians
Herodians
The Herodians were a sect or party mentioned in the New Testament as having on two occasions — once in Galilee, and again in Jerusalem — manifested an unfriendly disposition towards Jesus .In each of these cases their name is coupled with that of the Pharisees...
), lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. In one account, given in the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
, Sicarii destroyed the city's food supply so that the people would be forced to fight against the Roman siege instead of negotiating peace. Sicarii also raided Jewish habitations and killed fellow Jews whom they considered apostate and collaborators.
After the creation of Israel
According to a study by the political scientist Noemi Gal-Or shows that since the creation of Israel, Jewish terrorism has been assessed as "far less significant" than Arab terrorism. It lasted a few years during the 1950s and was directed at internal Israel-Jewish targets, not at the Israeli Arab population. There was then a long intermission until the 1980s, when the Jewish Underground was exposed.It has been suggested that a striking similarity between the Jewish groups, and jihad networks in Western democracies is their alienation and isolation from the values of the majority, mainstream culture, which they view as an existential threat to their own community. Other similarities between these groups are that their terrorist ideology is not exclusively religious, as it attempts to achieve political, territorial and nationalistic goals as well, e.g. the disruption of the Camp David accords. However, the newer of these Jewish groups have tended to emphasise religious motives for their actions at the expense of secular ones. In the case of Jewish terrorism most networks consist of religious Zionists and ultra-orthodox Jews living in isolated, homogenous communities.
The following groups have been considered religious terrorist organizations in Israel:
- Gush Emunim UndergroundGush Emunim UndergroundThe Jewish Underground was a militant organization formed by prominent members of the Israeli political movement Gush Emunim that existed from 1979 to 1984. The group's highest profile plot was to destroy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem....
(1979–84): formed by members of the Israeli political movement Gush EmunimGush EmunimGush Emunim was an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While not formally established as an organization until 1974 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Gush Emunim sprang out of the conquests of the Six-Day War in 1967, encouraging...
. This group is most well-known for two actions. Firstly, for bomb attacks on the mayors of West BankWest BankThe West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
cities on June 2nd 1980, and secondly, an abandoned plot to blow up the Temple MountTemple MountThe Temple Mount, known in Hebrew as , and in Arabic as the Haram Ash-Sharif , is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been used as a religious site for thousands of years...
mosques. The Israeli Judge Zvi Cohen, heading the sentencing panel at the group’s trial, stated that they had three motives, ‘not necessarily shared by all the defendants. The first motive, at the heart of the Temple Mount conspiracy, is religious.’
- Keshet (Kvutza Shelo Titpasher) (1981–1989): A Tel AvivTel AvivTel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
anti-Zionist haredi group focused on bombing property without loss of life. Yigal Marcus, Tel Aviv District Police commander, said that he considered the group a gang of criminals, not a terrorist group.
- The "Bat Ayin Underground" or Bat AyinBat AyinBat Ayin is a village and an Israeli settlement and in Gush Etzion, on the edge of the Judean hills in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council...
group. In 2002, four people from Bat Ayin and Hebron were arrested outside of Abu Tor School, a Palestinian girls' school in East Jerusalem, with a trailer filled with explosives. Three of the men were convicted for the attempted bombing.
- Brit HaKanaimBrit HaKanaimBrit HaKanaim was a radical religious Jewish underground organisation which operated in Israel between 1950 and 1953, against the widespread trend of secularisation in the country. The group was made up of students at the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem and had more than 35 members at its peak...
(Hebrew: בְּרִית הַקַנַאִים, lit. Covenant of the Zealots) was a radical religious Jewish underground organisation which operated in IsraelIsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
between 1950 and 1953, against the widespread trend of secularisation in the country. The ultimate goal of the movement was to impose Jewish religious law in the State of Israel and establish a Halakhic state.
- The Kingdom of Israel groupKingdom of Israel (group)The Kingdom of Israel , or Tzrifin Underground, was a violent political group active in Israel in the 1950s."Kingdom of Israel," was the name used by the group's members but it was better known to the Israeli public as the "Tzrifin Underground", after the Tzrifin military base, where its members...
(Hebrew: מלכות ישראל, Malchut Yisrael), or Tzrifin Underground, were active in Israel in the 1950s. The group carried out attacks on the diplomatic facilities of the USSR and Czechoslovakia and occasionally shot at Jordanian troops stationed along the border in Jerusalem. Members of the group caught trying to bomb the Israeli Ministry of Education in May 1953, have been described as acting because of the secularisation of Jewish North African immigrants which they saw as 'a direct assault on the religious Jews' way of life and as an existential threat to the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel.'
Individuals
A number of violent acts by Jews have been described as terrorism and attributed to religious motivations:- Yaakov TeitelYaakov TeitelYaakov "Jack" Teitel is an American-Israeli Orthodox Jew arrested in October 2009 for his alleged connection to various acts of domestic terror. Teitel moved to Israel in 2000, and has been living since then in the West-Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel.Teitel lived in Israel for several months in...
an American-born Israeli, was arrested in the aftermath of the 2009 Tel Aviv gay center shooting for putting up posters that praised the attack. Although Teitel confessed to the gay center shooting, Israeli police have determined he had no part in the attack. In 2009 Teitel was arrested and indicted for several acts of domestic terror, namely a pipe bomb attack against leftist intellectual Zeev SternhellZeev SternhellZeev Sternhell is an Israeli historian and one of the world's leading experts on Fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and writes for Haaretz newspaper.-Biography:...
, the murders of a Palestinian taxi driver and a West Bank shepherd in 1997, and sending a booby-trapped package to the home of a Messianic Jewish family in ArielAriel (city)Ariel is an Israeli settlement and a city in the West Bank. Ariel was established in 1978. Its population at the end of 2009 was 17,600, including 7,000 immigrants who came to Israel after 1990. It is the fourth largest Jewish settlement city in the West Bank., after Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit,...
. A search of his home revealed a cache of guns and parts used in explosive devices. As of January 2011, the case is still pending trial. - Eden Natan-ZadaEden Natan-ZadaEden Natan-Zada was an Israeli terrorist who was born to a Jewish family that immigrated to Israel from Iran. He was an AWOL Israeli soldier who opened fire in a bus in Shefa-Amr in northern Israel on 4 August 2005, killing four Arab citizens of Israel and wounding twelve others. He was restrained,...
killed four Israeli Arab civilians on August 4, 2005. His actions were criticized by then prime minister Ariel SharonAriel SharonAriel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
, as "a reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist", and author Ami Pedhzer describes his motivations as religious. - Baruch GoldsteinBaruch GoldsteinBaruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician and mass murderer who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125....
an American-born Israeli physician, perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacreCave of the Patriarchs massacreThe Cave of the Patriarchs massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler and member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs site in Hebron in the...
in the city of Hebron, in which he shot and killed 29 Muslim worshipers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque (within the Cave of the PatriarchsCave of the PatriarchsThe Cave of the Patriarchs or the Cave of Machpelah , is known by Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham or Ibrahimi Mosque ....
), and wounded another 125 victims. Goldstein was killed by the survivors. Goldstein was a supporter of KachKachKach is town and union council of the Ziarat District in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is located at 30°26'2N 67°19'27E and has an altitude of 2020m ....
, an Israeli political party founded by Rabbi Meir KahaneMeir KahaneMartin David Kahane , also known as Meir Kahane , was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli Knesset...
that advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Territories. In the aftermath of the Goldstein attack and Kach statements praising it, Kach was outlawed in Israel. - Yigal AmirYigal AmirYigal Amir is the Israeli assassin of Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination took place on November 4, 1995 at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv. Amir is currently serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under...
's assassination of Yitzhak RabinAssassination of Yitzhak RabinThe assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv...
on November 4, 1995 has been described as terrorism with a religious motivation. Amir was quoted as saying he had "acted alone and on orders from God." and that "If not for a Halakhic ruling of din rodef, made against Rabin by a few rabbis I knew about, it would have been very difficult for me to murder." A former combat soldier who had studied Jewish law, Amir stated that his decision to kill the prime minister was influenced by the opinions of militant rabbis that such an assassination would be justified by the Halakhic ruling of din rodef ("pursuer's decree"). This Jewish religious concept allows for an immediate execution of a person if that person is "pursuing", that is, attempting immediately to take your life or the life of another person, although the characterization of Rabin as din rodef was rejected as a perversion of law by most rabbinic authorities. According to Amir, allowing the Palestinian Authority to expand on the West Bank represented such a danger.Amir was associated with the radical EyalEyalEyal is a kibbutz in the Centre District of Israel close to the Green line. It is under the jurisdiction of the Drom HaSharon Regional Council-Geography:...
movement, which had been greatly influenced by Kahanism.
See also
- Christian terrorism
- Islamic terrorism
- Judaism and violenceJudaism and violenceThis article deals with the views of Judaism and warfare.The love of peace and the pursuit of peace, as well as laws requiring the eradication of "evil" using violent means, co-exist within the Jewish tradition....
- Price tag policyPrice tag policyPrice tag policy is, according to B'tselem, the name given to "acts of random violence aimed at the Palestinian population and Israeli security forces" by radical Israeli Jewish settlers, who, according to the New York Times "exact a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security...
- Religious violenceReligious violenceReligious violence is a term that covers all phenomena where religion, in any of its forms, is either the subject or object of violent behaviour. Religious violence is, specifically, violence that is motivated by or in reaction to religious precepts, texts or doctrines...
- Zionist political violenceZionist political violenceZionist political violence refers to acts of violence committed by Zionists in the British Mandate of Palestine for political reasons, mainly to advance the creation of Israel, a Jewish state....