Israeli Neo Nazi gang??

[Grumpmeister]

Just when I think that the Middle East couldnt be any more bloody surreal something like this crops up. How on earth could a Neo Nazi gang develop in Israel, even with the Law of Return.

Israeli police say they have broken up a gang of neo-Nazis who are accused of carrying out attacks on foreigners, gay people and religious Jews.
The eight suspects, aged 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago, but the news only emerged on Saturday.

Police say searches of their homes yielded Nazi uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.

Israel was founded in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust in which millions died.

The arrests follow a year-long inquiry which began after a synagogue in Petah Tikva, a city east of Tel Aviv, was desecrated with graffiti of Nazi swastikas and the name of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his horror at what he called "violence for the sake of violence."

"I am sure that there is not a person in Israel who can remain indifferent to these scenes, which indicate that we too as a society have failed in the education of these youths," he said.

Tattoos

The eight accused, who include the group's alleged leader, are all from Petah Tikva.

The gang members sported tattoos popular with white supremacists - including the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

"We believe that this is the main gang working in the area... the main gang that exists [in Israel] that attempts to use Hitler's ideology," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency.

Police say the gang members would target homosexuals, Jews who wore a skull cap and drug addicts, often video taping their attacks.

"It is difficult to believe that Nazi ideology sympathisers can exist in Israel, but it is a fact," Revital Almog, the police official who led the investigation, told Israeli public radio.

Video tapes

The suspects have admitted assaulting a number of people in Tel Aviv, most of them foreign workers.

Ms Almog said the gang would pick on someone who appeared unable to defend themselves and then attack.

They often filmed or photographed the violence.

Footage of the attacks show people lying on the ground whilst being kicked by more than one assailant.

In one clip a man is hit around the back of the head with a bottle.

According to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz one video shows gang members surrounding a Russian drug addict as he admits to being a Jew. The youths then order him onto his knees to beg for forgiveness for being Jewish and a drug addict before viciously beating not only him, but also another man who tries to intervene.

The suspects all migrated to Israel under the Law of Return which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen.

Ms Almog said of the accused, "their connection to Judaism is distant, through grandparents or distant family connections".

[Nick]

Tough one. The Israelis have treated the Palestinins like shit for years (I lived there for a while and saw it). Odd that they let Nazis in, or bred them.

I can't celebrate Nazis, but I do like to see those bastard Israelis screwed. They were horrid!

[Grumpmeister]

I agree Nick, the treatment of the Palestinians has been an absolute abomination though there is a part of me that has always wondered if it would have been the same if we had given a decent level of long term support to the area instead of just dumping the Jews there at the end of WW2

[Nick]

I was off there on a long rant about the Balfour Declaration and this mob

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binyamin_Elon

and then lost the lot, amongst others. I lived by the Gaza Strip for a while. They treated the Palestinians like shit!

[Misunderstood]

I think this thread is a living testamony to the power of propaganda and indoctrination.

When I was in Syria, Jordan, The Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi I saw enough raw hatred of everything vaguely Jewish to last me a lifetime.  I was sick of the ongoing ordeals of having to drop my pants to prove I wasn't a Jew at every border, or have to carry two passports to avoid having an Israeli visa on it, to realise that if the Jews didn't have a healthy dislike of all things Arab they would indeed be worthy of God status.

I don't believe anybody can live in the midst of so much inbred loathing for so long and still find it in them to be nice back.

All I can say is, I'm very glad I am not involved.  I agree that some things that the Israelis do is beyond the pale but I do also think that gross provocation lies behind most of it, and for that reason I would not condemn them.

I believe we will not find peace in the middle east until some time after the oil runs out.  They think it was a godsend to have so much money flowing in, but all it bought was division and bloodshed. it was the curse of a nation.

[Nick]

Or after USA funding runs out?

[Misunderstood]

Or after USA funding runs out?

Amounts to the same thing doesn't it?

[Grumpmeister]

Or after USA funding runs out?

That won't happen as long as the Evangelical lobby has the degree of power that it currently has. They believe that one of the portents of the second coming is the return of the Jews to their homeland.

[Nick]

Yup. The Evangelicals are bonkers about that. And the Jewish lobby is very strong in the US too.

[Misunderstood]

Yup. The Evangelicals are bonkers about that. And the Jewish lobby is very strong in the US too.

I was thinking more about the change of attitude by the assorted Arabs encouraged by oncoming poverty...