Скачать или смотреть ISRAEL: WEST BANK: POLICE SEARCH FOR JEWISH EXTREMISTS

(7 Nov 1995) English/Nat

A day after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's burial, police searched for Jewish extremists in an anti-government stronghold on the West Bank.

Police came up empty-handed but the search appears to be the beginning of a crackdown on groups incite violence in the anti-government Jewish community.

In this seminary in the anti-government stronghold of Kfar Tapuah students have already begun paying homage to the gunman who assassinated Israel's Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

One has drawn these pictures onto a bookstand: Rabin and his successor, Shimon Peres, both dangling from gallows.

Underneath the inscription: "Yigal Amir lives."

Yigal Amir is Rabin's confessed killer. Police are currently investigating whether 25-year-old Amir, and his brother, Hagai, 27, were part of a larger right-wing conspiracy.

Police officials believe Hagai Amir may have been a member of Kahane Chai, several of whom live in Kfar Tapuah.

This anti-Arab group was outlawed-- along with its sister group Kach after Kach activist Baruch Goldstein shot dead 29 Muslim worshipers in the West Bank town of Hebron in February 1994.

The Kusra family are typical of the extremist Jews.

They came to Israel some years ago from New York answering the call of the Israeli government to populate the West Bank.

According to head of the family, Meir, they never watch television, rarely listen to the radio and only read the newspapers once a week.

They are devoutly religious but preach a religion which doesn't allow for much flexibility.

SOUNDBITE: (English)

"I think that if you travel through a lot of Israeli you'll find although people are disturbed by the fact that a Jew used a gun against another Jew, they're not going to mourn an individual who in his own rhetoric has ruined our lives."

SUPER CAPTION: Meir Kusra, settler at Tapuah

Today (Tuesday), police conducted searches in Kfar Tapuah.

SOUNDBITE: (English)

"They've removed a player who was trying to take away my home. My solution to peace is if Prime Minister Rabin and his cronies want to give away my home, lets start with his home first."

SUPER CAPTION: Meir Kusra, settler at Tapuah

Many activists here claim to have felt joy and relief when Rabin was killed, comparing Rabin's assassination to the shooting death of New York-born Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990.

This would once have been dismissed as babble by a harmless lunatic fringe.

But now Israel's leaders are taking the militants seriously.

But many militants, such as Meir's wife, are confident they have done nothing illegal.

SOUNDBITE: (English)

"If I had a pile of money I'd send it to the defense attorney to support of the democratic process the right of the accused to be defended in a court of law."

SUPER CAPTION: Wife of Meir Kusra

The right-wing opposition, stung by accusations that it failed to uproot such fanatic elements from its midst have promised support for any crackdown by Israeli authorities..

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