WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Posted on 02/16/2005 9:39:34 AM PST by Alouette
A shadowy quasi-organization aims to usurp the mainstream settlement lobby by launching a series of controversial demonstrations, moderate and radical settler leaders said Tuesday.
On Monday evening, the group surprised the police and the media when it deployed several hundred protesters to some of Israel's busiest intersections during rush hour. They brought large swaths of the country to a halt as they scuffled with police and burned tires in protest of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
While some have dubbed it the "Jewish Tanzim," unofficial spokesmen for the mysterious group, affiliates of the right-wing groups Jewish Leadership and Kach, claimed Tuesday evening that the group is so secret it does not have a name.
"Those people," said Kach activist Noam Federman, referring to the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, "cannot handle such a struggle because they receive their funding from the establishment.
"We expect them to clear the way for good Jews who can handle a real struggle against these tyrannical laws," he told Channel 10 on Tuesday, expressing his support for the fledgling far-right-wing organization.
One far-right activist, partly affiliated with the new organization, crowed Tuesday that "we showed that we could be successful in launching an entirely secret operation. The beauty in this was that even the Shin Bet and the police had no idea that this was about to occur."
He commended the organization for "not falling prey to infiltration by the Shin Bet. That in itself is a success."
The far Right has scrupulously avoided advocating violence. Yet to maintain its "deterrent effect," key members continue to hint at imminent violence. Said the far-right-wing activist: "this [the protests Monday] was just a warning to show what we can do if they [the government] anger us. The people out there are organized. They are the hard core of the settlement activists."
The organization's platform, claimed some of its affiliates, calls for activists to bring maximum attention to their cause by giving most Israelis no other choice but to notice them. The organization disseminated word of the protests through SMS messages on cellphones, ensuring that the source of the messages was kept secret, said one of the activists. Normally news of a protest or demonstration is disseminated at settlements and synagogues by posters or leaflets, or on the Internet.
Kach spokesman Itamar Ben-Gvir estimated that "several thousand" activists belong to the organization, "though not all of them know it." He noted that the group was an admixture of several far-right-wing, and often marginal, groups. But "they don't like to show themselves and asked not to be revealed. They are young, that is after the IDF, they took an initiative, and they are interested in intensifying this activity."
Baruch Marzel, head of the far-right National Jewish Front, called the launch of the new movement the "start of the new war against the uprooting [the Right's name for Sharon's disengagement plan]. This is just the beginning."
For years, the settlement council has considered Israel's far Right to be its worst enemy. Members of this movement, many of whom do not recognize the authority of the State of Israel, number between five and 10 percent of the settler population, said Emily Amrusi, the spokeswoman for the settlers' council.
"They have called us and Benzi [Lieberman, head of the settlers' council] collaborators and slashed our tires," she said. "We've known about their effort to push us aside for years."
"I don't know why the police have not arrested them," she added.
For its part, Israel Police and the courts have begun handing down stiffer penalties for anti-disengagement protesters. Seven men accused of stopping traffic and slashing tires of Palestinian vehicles along the Palestinians' main north-south axis in the Gaza Strip this week have been remanded until the end of the investigation against them.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Ideas straight out of the KGB playbook.
Does the name Avishai Raviv ring a bell?
Sounds like an Israeli chapter of Protest Warrior.
Good for them.
Trading land for peace is just letting the Arabs edge the Jews into the sea.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was created and funded by the government. They have a history of agitprop and the timeing is right for their "appearance". It's just in time to give them an excuse to use physical violence against any percieved resister.Not if Baruch Marzel is involved.
-Eric
Only solution is civil disobedience!
Only solution is civil disobedience!
LOL, that's what they said about Avishai Raviv.
Why not just name the group shabac and be out with it, no wait that name is already taken, most likely by the same group.
Ben Gurion's sinking of the Altalena also comes to mind.
That little episode came very close to bringing a civil war to the harried infant Jewish state, and convinced many that BG would prefer to see a second holocaust by the Arabs if his Socialists couldn't run things.
As well as Menachem Begin's Herut.
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