Patrol 35 was an Israeli neo-Nazi organization led by Erik Bonite, who goes by the alias "Ely the Nazi". The group's members were aged 16 to 19 and it was based in Petah Tikva

Petah Tikva

Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...

, near Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel 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...

. In 2008 Bonite was sentenced to jail time, along with seven other members of the group, who desecrated a synagogue with swastikas and carried out attacks on religious Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

, foreign workers, drug addicts, and gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 people. According to the Daily Telegraph, the men's families were allowed to settle in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 under the Law of Return

Law of Return

The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...

, meaning that they had some Jewish ancestry, although they did not practice Judaism. Bonite reportedly said he would never have children because his grandfather was half Jewish and he did not want to father a "piece of trash with even the smallest percentage of Jewish blood". Patrol 35's members reportedly had tattoos with the number 88

88 (number)

88 is the natural number following 87 and preceding 89.- In mathematics :Eighty-Eight is a refactorable number, a primitive semiperfect number and an untouchable number...

 (a reference to Heil Hitler) and were stockpiling guns, TNT, knives, and portraits of Adolf Hitler. The group produced videos of their own attacks, which were found on computers seized by police.
Their discovery led to renewed calls amongst politicians to amend the Law of Return. Effi Eitam

Effi Eitam

Efraim "Effi" Eitam is an Israeli politician. A former leader of the National Religious Party, he later led a breakaway faction, Ahi, which merged into Likud in 2009. He served as a member of the Knesset between 2003 and 2009.-Biography:...

 of the National Religious Party

National Religious Party

The National Religious Party ) was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement. Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008, it was the second oldest surviving party in the country after Agudat Yisrael, and was part of every government coalition until 1992...

 and the National Union

National Union (Israel)

The National Union is an alliance of nationalist political parties in Israel. In the 2009 elections the National Union consisted of four parties: Moledet, Hatikva, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, and Tkuma.-Background:...

, which represent the religious Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 movement and have previously attempted to advance bills to amend the Law of Return, stated that Israel has become "a haven for people who hate Israel, hate Jews, and exploit the Law of Return to act on this hatred."

Judge Tsvi Gurfinkel, who issued the guilty verdict, opined that "the fact that they are Jews from the ex-Soviet Union and that they had sympathised with individuals who believed in racist theories is terrible." BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 reported that the news of the attacks and of the men's arrests in 2007 "shocked the nation" because Israel was founded in the wake of the The Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

. One of the members who was arrested and sentenced was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.