Grandson of ultra-nationalist Kahane arrested for involvement in extremist Jewish underground

The arrest came as the government approved harsher measures against Jewish extremists following a firebomb attack that killed a Palestinian baby in the West Bank village of Duma on Friday.

JPOST

The Shin Bet intelligence agency arrested far right figure Meir Etinger on Monday. Etinger, who has a banning order keeping him away from the West Bank and Jerusalem, is a resident of Safed, and was arrested by the Shin Bet, together with the Judea and Samaria Central police unit.

The arrest came as the government approved harsher measures against Jewish extremists following a firebomb attack that killed a Palestinian baby in the West Bank village of Duma on Friday.

The Shin Bet said Etinger is in custody “due to his involvement and activities in extremist Jewish organizations.”

A security source said Ettinger, who is the grandson of the late ultra nationalist militant ideologue Meir Kahana, is suspected of being part of an “extremist infrastructure.”

The source declined to say whether the arrest had any direct link to the deadly arson attack on a Palestinian home in the village of Duma last week.

According to Channel 1, the extremist infrastructure that Ettinger built was behind the June 18 arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes in the Galilee.

While two Jewish youths were indicted for that attack last week, there was not enough evidence to hold Etinger for his involvement, Channel 1 reported.

This led Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to institute administrative detention, in which Palestinian terror suspects are detained for an indeterminate amount of time without being charged, for Jewish terror suspects as well, Channel 1 reported. The move came as part of a series of moves by the government to crack down on Jewish extremists in the aftermath of the Duma attack.

According to Channel 1, members of the group led by Ettinger have gone as far as to discuss carrying out suicide terror attacks against Palestinians.

In a blog post published on July 30 on the Hakol Heyehudi (Jewish Voice) website, responding to a Shin Bet arrest of suspected arsonists behind the attack on the Church of the Loaves and the Fishes, Ettinger wrote, “The truth is I don’t know what the Shin Bet wanted me to organize… this impulse of the Shin Bet to create an atmosphere and make up displays as if there is an ‘organization’ that it exposes, explains to us well what the Shin Bet understands so well and is so afraid of… the Shin Bet understand that the activities they chase after… simply grow out of the ground from the most basic and popular understandings that cause people to feel that they need to do something.”

He added, “There is no terrorist organization, but there are lots and lots of Jews, much more than what they think, whose ladder of values is completely different from that of the High Court of Justice or the Shin Bet.”