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| By Israel Insider staff September 9, 2007 |
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| One of the suspects is led away by Israeli police (FLASH90) |
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After a year of investigations, police arrested nine members of a neo-Nazi ring operating in Petah Tikvah, according to local papers. The suspects, all immigrants aged 17 to 19 from the former Soviet Union, confessed to assaulting dozens of people, primarily foreign workers, in Tel Aviv. A police officer involved in the case said the suspects were not Jewish, although some may have had a distant Jewish relative to qualify for immigration under the Law of Return. (See Israel National News video.)
Police said that the group's alleged leader, Eli Boanitov, "led them to attack, in a cruel and brutal manner, citizens and innocent people belonging to various groups including Asians, drug addicts, gays, punks and kippa-wearing Jews," according to the Jerusalem Post.
Police have seized 5 kilograms of explosives, a pistol, and an M-16 assault rifle belonging to the group, Haaretz reported, which members reportedly intended to use against punk rockers in Tel Aviv.
One video that police found shows some of the teens surrounding a young Russian heroin addict, who admits he is Jewish. Later the gang members order him to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness from the Russian people for being Jewish and a junky.
"In the movies, one can see gang members punching and kicking, using broken bottles and everything at hand, attacking innocent victims without any prior contact or instigation," said a police spokesmen.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned the neo-Nazi criminal activity as "an anathema to the Jewish state and is to be repelled," but stressed that the suspects behavior should not be deemed representative of the whole community of immigrants from the FSU.
"The ADL urges that stereotypes are not formed on a whole community because of a small group," an ADL statement read.
Superintendent Revital Almog said that although the suspects all came to Israel through the Law of Return, "their connection to Judaism is distant, through grandparents or distant family connections," she said.
"The tragic irony in this is that they would have been chosen for annihilation by the Nazi they strive to emulate," the ADL's statement said.
MK Zevulun Orlev (NU-NRP) is to present a bill calling to revoke the citizenships of neo-Nazis in Israel and deport them once they have completed their sentences.
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