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Jewish terrorists are troubled, young rebels who have gone astray – far from the core values of Israel. This is the stereotype that most Israelis have of their fellow citizens who commit violent acts against Arabs in pursuit of their far-right political agenda.
A new documentary series, "The Jewish Underground", aims to break once and for all this persistent myth, telling the story of the most notorious Jewish terrorists in the country who were – and remain – all but foreigners.
The three-part series, created by Israeli journalist Shai Gal, recounts (and recreates) how a group of determined Jewish settlers committed acts of violence in the early 1980s, blowing up cars, planting explosives in the buses. and storing explosives in order to destroy the Dome of the Rock (part of the site known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif).
The history of the Jewish metro is not new. But, some 30 years later, he is finally seen in his full and cold context.
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The same men who committed these acts always retain the same ideology and the same agenda. But today, they are at the center of power in Israeli politics – a much more effective place from which to work toward their vision of a renewed biblical Jewish kingdom with a Third Temple on the Temple Mount.
While Yehuda Etzion, a former member of the Jewish Underground – sentenced and jailed for his involvement in terrorist activities, and one of the stars of the series – told Gal: "We are targeting the same target. We simply use different means. "
As a young member of the movement, Etzion participated in the plot to blow up the Muslim holy site on the Temple Mount, hoping that this would lead to a holy war that would lead to Jewish victory.
Today, he is the leader of a group that works to promote Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and to revive ancient traditions such as the sacrifice of animals. Indeed, the series of Gal opens on a nocturnal recreation of the Pbadover sacrifice, the flames of the bonfire that flicker on the face of Etzion.
Emil Salman
Messianic Fervor
The idea of the series came to Gal while he was spending a sabbatical year at the University of Michigan studying extremist movements. For his research, he read "Dear Brothers" of Haggai Segal – today a senior Israeli journalist who, in his twenties, pleaded guilty to participating in the planting of bombs that mutilated two mayors of the West Bank. (He finally served two years of a five-year sentence.)
The group that became known as the Jewish Underground was an offshoot of the settler movement that became a vigilante cell and began vengeance attacks against the Palestinians.
They were animated by a mixture of frustration that the Israeli government had not repressed Palestinian violence against the Jews and feared that the Camp David Accords of 1978 would be a first step towards the end of the war. colonial enterprise, with the messianic fervor of members like Etzion.
The first operation of the group (for which Segal was imprisoned) took place in June 1980: car bombings targeting the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah; a third mayor was spared when the device was found before starting his engine.
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Israel's vaunted intelligence services failed to solve the problem, and three years later, in July 1983, students from the Hebron Islamic College were shot dead by subway members in revenge for the murder of A yeshiva student. Three people were killed and 33 other students and teachers were injured or injured.
A year later came the plot that turned out to be the group's downfall: an attempt to blow up five buses carrying Palestinians. The movement's activities were eventually detected by the Shin Bet security service, which arrested them after placing the bombs on the buses.
It was only later that the authorities became aware of the real extent of danger that the group represented. They had accumulated enough explosives to blow up the Dome of the Rock, which, they thought, would pave the way for the construction of the Third Temple.
Like most Israelis, Gal knew the basic story of the movement. However, he said that he was surprised when he really dug what had happened and was amazed that it was never fully documented on the film.
"The details were crazy," he says. "These men broke into a military camp on the Golan Heights in 1982, stole more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives – mines that were stored in wartime – and built 27 explosive devices, using 750 kilos from C4 the Temple Mount.This was super serious. "
Another revelation for Gal: The fact that the main leaders of the vigilance cell came from the mainstream, not the fringes, of Israeli society.
"These men were part of the general leadership of the settlers.One was the secretary of Gush Emunim.Another was working at the city hall of Hebron and Kiryat Arba.L & # 39; One was a pilot in the Israeli air force.There were several sons-in-law of senior rabbis, sons-in-law of senior IDF personnel.These were not aliens. "
What really caught Gal's attention, is when he looked closely at where some of the major criminals are. Two are key leaders of the settlers: Ze & ev ("Zambian") Hever is the general secretary of Amana, a cooperative that builds settlements in the West Bank; His stated goal is to settle a million Jews in the next decade. Another clandestine leader, Nathan Nathanson, is a close political badociate of Habayit Hayehudi's leader, Naftali Bennett, also minister of education.
"Once I realized that members of this underground underground who had been convicted of terrorist activity now held positions of responsibility at the highest levels of the Israeli government, I knew that it was a story I had to do. "
"Justice and Order: The Jewish Subway"
The first two episodes are structured as an episode of "Law & Order". The police history is played in the initial episode, the members of the Jewish Underground describing in detail how they met, planned and perpetrated their crimes. Meanwhile, senior Shin Bet officials accused of arresting them – Shin Bet Jewish Unit Chief Carmi Gillon and Jerusalem District and West Bank District Chief Jacob Perry – describe their frustration with gambling cat and mouse. they, with their targets repeatedly evading capture.
"They were very serious and very sophisticated," concedes Gal. "Think about it: it took Shin Bet's team A four years – 30,000 hours of investigations – to catch them."
The second episode reviews the trials, convictions and convictions of the clandestine members in a case brought by a public prosecutor who would eventually rise to take the head of the Supreme Court: Dorit Beinisch.
>> A former Jewish underground detainee receives more than 1.3 million shekels from Israel
Although Beinisch managed to win his cases, public pressure – including letters and petitions calling for the early release of convicted terrorists – shook the consequences of the crimes. The conditions of detention were lenient; sentences have been reduced for good behavior; and some enjoyed pardons that drastically shortened their sentences.
Dan Peretz
Even the three members of the clandestine Jewish clan sentenced to death and sentenced to life imprisonment Their role in the shooting of the Islamic College was commuted by the then president, Chaim Herzog. In December 1990, they were all released after serving less than seven years in prison.
It is here that the third episode hammers the central message of the story: Jewish terrorists came out of their relatively short sentences with fanfare and celebrations, without repentance and carried by the support that was given to them. they had received from their community. In the following years, they recovered to positions of influence, moving the country in the desired direction.
"None of them ever told me anything," I was young and stupid when I did these things ", notes Gal. . "They are proud of what they did."
In an illustration of how the Jewish Underground's agenda has become mainstream, Gal's film ends with a "Seekers of Zion" convention at the Knesset held in honor of Temple Mount activists.
Political figures such as Yuli Edelstein, Speaker of the Knesset, and Gilad Erdan, Minister of Public Security, were proud of the activists' cause, projecting on the wall the landslides of a rebuilt temple – the Dome of the Rock.
Religious Devotion
Gillon, who became head of the Shin Bet in the 1990s, kindly admits to Gal that, according to him, the Jewish camp won the battle between competing visions of a Jewish state and the future. a democratic state. "They are more dedicated to their idea," he says of former members of Underground.
"It's exactly what you see with Hamas or Hezbollah," he notes. "A religious person who believes that he is commanded from above can not compromise on this commandment.A secular person is more pragmatic to start.But they have a goal: to make Israel a state. Jewish governed by religious Jewish law, perpetuate the occupation and abrogate the liberal laws. "
Gal says it was important to gather the full sweeping stories of these men over 30 years. The events, he says, go so fast in Israel that it's often impossible for people to understand the broader nature of what's going on.
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"Even those like me, as a correspondent who have been covering news here for years, operate in a world where we only see parts of history." We do not see the situation in his together, "explains Gal." Even senior politicians who have watched my documentary have said that it has helped them see what has really happened here over the past 30 years. "
Gal grew up in a kibbutz, where he discovered his journalistic curiosity by accidentally hearing some of the sessions his psychologist mother had with his patients.
"I knew I loved listening to people's stories," he says. After his military service (he is still a major in the tanks reserves), he enters the university, where he "discovers the power of television journalism" and knows that he wants to make a career there.
After 13 years as a reporter for Channel 2 News, Gal is now correspondent for the award-winning television show "Uvda" ("Fact" in Hebrew).
Over the years, her in-depth reporting has often had an impact on the events in Israel: Her profile on Naama Margolese, an 8-year-old girl terrorized by ultra-Orthodox men in Beit Shemesh in 2011, led to a backlash that resulted in hundreds of thousands of protesters. A heartbreaking story that he aired about poverty among IDF soldiers was credited with improving their conditions.
In this case, telling the story of the Jewish metro may not have immediate results. But Gal hopes that the Israeli public will pause by considering the track record of some players' power today and their impact on the current reality of Israel.
It is a lesson, he believes, that is not exclusive to Israel at this very moment. While extremist movements are gaining momentum around the world, it has been said in a recent European projection that the message of his documentary was relevant in many countries.
"This is not just an Israeli story," he concludes. "It's the story of how extreme ideology finds its way into mainstream politics."
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