Jewish Settler Terror Groups Have a Long History in Hebron

By Steve Sosebee

The seeds of the Hebron massacre were quietly planted in January 1991 when the last members of a notorious Jewish terror underground were set free from Ma'asiyahu Prison near Tel Aviv. Three men, each of whom served less than seven years of life sentences, were cheered as heroes by a large, celebratory crowd of armed Jewish settlers. They were the last detained members of the Terror Against Terror (TNT in Hebrew) settler underground that engulfed the West Bank in innocent blood from 1978 to 1984.

None showed remorse for murdering innocent civilians. Instead they vowed to continue their holy struggle against "Arab terror" in the West Bank as they returned home to the settlement of Kiryat Arba. They were comrades of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who on Feb. 25 shot to death 29 Palestinian men and boys as they prayed at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron.

The leniency with which the Israeli government treated organized Jewish terror groups like TNT in the years preceding and during the intifada sent a clear signal to both Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinian opposition to military occupation, even legitimate nonviolent political acts, was swiftly and often violently crushed. Militants from Israeli groups like TNT, by contrast, served light sentences for aggressive and violent acts against innocent Palestinians, if they were brought to court and tried at all. This double standard further deepened Arab resentment to Israeli occupation and indicated to Jewish extremists that acts of violent provocation carried few longterm legal consequences.

Jewish terrorist groups and the larger settler movement gained real strength in Israel following election of the rightwing Likud Party under Menachem Begin in 1977. His dream to settle "Judea and Samaria" with Jews and eventually annex the West Bank fit into the plans of messianic Jewish settlers who regarded the land as their God-given heritage.

The harsh rhetoric and uncompromising behavior of the Begin government in the occupied territories created a perfect climate for a settler terror underground to flourish. TNT members were religious Jews with a rightwing nationalist agenda not different from that of Begin, a former Irgun terrorist. Their worst fear then, as it is today, is a political settlement between Israel and the PLO.

TNT functioned with financial support from many sympathetic American Zionists and the Kach movement under Rabbi Meir Kahane. Some American members received paramilitary training organized by the Jewish Defense League. Such paramilitary training of rightwing Zionists by the Kahane Chai (Kahane Lives) organization for "work" in the West Bank is still going on in upstate New York. TNT also had strong ties with Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), the settler political movement centered in Kiryat Arba overlooking Hebron, and many rightwing Israeli politicians. Prominent rabbis also condoned the settlers' acts of terror against innocent Arabs.

According to Israeli police, TNT was composed of four main cells. The three men released in 1991 were part of the largest and most active of the four cells, named after its leader, Yorem Livni. The Livni cell, based in Kiryat Arba, had among its members Israeli military officers and munitions experts.

On June 2, 1980, the Livni cell planted bombs in the cars of Nablus Mayor Bassani Shaka'a, who lost both of his legs, and Ramallah Mayor Karim Khalaf, who lost half his foot. They also put a bomb on the garage door of elBireh Mayor Ibrahim Tawil, which blinded an Israeli soldier who tried to defuse the explosive. The terrorists claimed later that their aim in attacking the mayors was "not to kill them; killed they would become martyrs, while wounded they would serve as a living ongoing deterrent. " A TNT bomb exploded that same day in a crowded Hebron market injuring 11 Palestinians, including four children.

"Regional Defense"

The Livni group obtained the weapons used in bombing the mayors' cars from the Israel Defense Forces as part of a "regional defense program." They also stole mines left over from the Syrian defense positions on the Golan Heights. As with Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the settlers were issued weapons for serving in the Israeli military reserve, which they were permitted to do near their settlements.

In October 1992 TNT bombed a soccer stadium in Hebron, injuring two Palestinian children. In February 1993, Muslim guards found bombs in two mosques in Hebron just before they exploded. In July 1993, two of the three men released in 1991 carried out a militarystyle assault on Hebron University. Wearing Arab clothing and driving a West Bank car, the settlers sprayed machine-gun fire and tossed hand grenades, killing four students and seriously injuring over 30 others.

Like the other three TNT cells, the Livni group had an elaborate plan from 1978-82 to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Though members of this group had desecrated the mosque many times in the past, the bombing was called off because the group could not get permission from the prominent rabbis in the Gush Emunim movement. This led to a split in TNT. Other settlers known as the "Tribe of Judah" tried to blow up the mosque in 1984, but were seen scaling the walls with guns and explosives by Arab guards. These men were later arrested where they were living in the abandoned village of Lifta near Jerusalem.

In 1984, Israeli police broke the Livni cell and arrested 24 settlers on charges ranging from conspiracy to premeditated murder. The mass arrest followed the attempted bombing of six Arab-owned buses in Jerusalem. The settlers planted under each bus three four-kilo bombs packed with high explosives. Had they exploded in central Jerusalem, as planned, an untold number of people, including many tourists, would have been killed or injured.

When the members of the Livni cell were arrested in 1984, neither the National Religious Party, which has seats in the Knesset, nor Gush Emunim would publicly condemn their acts of terror. On May 9, 1984, Yuval Ne'eman, the leader of Tehiya Party and former cabinet minister in the Shamir government, endorsed the bombing of the mayors as "positive. " He said it "paralyzed the main instigators of the [West Bank] without killing anyone. "

The bloody history of the Israeli settler terror underground would be just interesting reading if not for its contemporary relevance following the Hebron mosque massacre. In light of TNT's well-known (in Israel) acts of violence, one must wonder how Brig. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who commanded the West Bank in 199293, could testify to the official Israeli panel investigating the massacre that he did not "imagine for a moment that a Jew could do such a thing."

At the end of March 1994, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva released a report concerning the Hebron massacre which stated that the Israeli "settlers seem largely immune from the legal consequences of criminal acts against Palestinians. " The ICJ, which has addressed Israeli violations in the occupied territories in the past, reiterated that "issues related to the arming of settlers and the inaction of Israeli forces, police and courts in the face of this violence are of primary concern. " The ICJ also noted that the Israeli government has issued more than 9,000 weapons to settlers in the territories and that security at the mosque the day of the massacre was "unusually lax. "

Little has been said in the press concerning the existence of terror groups like TNT in Kiryat Arba where Goldstein lived. The possibility that Goldstein was part of an organized group determined to drown the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles in Arab blood deserves at least a closer look.

Niv Drori, one of the Israeli guards at the mosque the morning of the massacre, reported to the Israeli panel that Goldstein was not the only settler who carried a rifle into the shrine. "I am sure Goldstein had an M 16 and another man who is not familiar to us entered carrying a Glilon, Drori testified.

The IDF reported that all bullets fired inside the mosque came from a Galil assault rifle, which is a long version of the Glilon and is distinctly different from Goldstein's M16. When asked if anyone helped the American-born physician massacre innocent people, Drori replied: "Not from the soldiers."

Considering that the official inquiry eventually based its lone gunman conclusion mainly on the forensic report rather than the eyewitness testimony of its own soldiers and Palestinian victims, it may never be known whether Goldstein was part of a larger group. It is clear that among the militant settlers in Hebron there is much unity and coordination and that they pose a real physical threat to innocent Palestinian civilians and to the prospects of long-term peace in the West Bank.

When police in March arrested Baruch Marzel, leader of the Kach movement, which was outlawed after the massacre, they found him at the home of Yoram Skolnick, a settler suspected of a cold-blooded murder in 1993. Skolnick told police then that he had shot a bound and naked Palestinian in March 1993 "in order to teach the Arabs a lesson. " Despite this statement, he was never convicted and is still living in a settlement near Hebron.

Whether another settler terror group is working in the West Bank is secondary to the fact that individual settlers continue to kill Palestinians, often without provocation. Exactly a month after the massacre, a settler from Hebron shot and killed a Palestinian truck driver on the main road near Hebron. The settler knew his victim was a Muslim because he was praying at the side of the road when he was killed. Five days later, another settler killed a youth near Nablus after having his car stoned.

Throughout the occupation Israeli settlers have had little concern for legal consequences to their acts of violence. The prospects of another organized terror group like TNT operating in the West Bank not only proves that Israel's soft handling of the Jewish terrorists produced a feeling of immunity concerning violent acts against Arabs, but also makes the road to real peace more difficult.

Steve Sosebee, a free-lance writer, is a founder of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.