3 Jewish extremists indicted for throwing rocks at Palestinians

Three Jewish extremists are indicted on charges of aggravated assault for throwing rocks at Palestinians in the northern West Bank in 2014.

According to the indictment filed at the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court, Meir Ettinger, Ben Zion Afarsemon and Dvir Yehuda ransacked the house of a Palestinian in the West Bank village of Burin. When the homeowner returned with a friend and began inspecting the damage, the suspects jumped out from a nearby hilltop where they had been waiting. Dvir used a sling-shot to catapult rocks in the direction of the Palestinians, while Ettinger and Afarsemon threw rocks at them.

“Subsequently, security forces arrived at the scene and the incident ended,” the indictment says, making no mention of injuries to the Palestinians.

The grandson of assassinated far-right rabbi Meir Kahane, Ettinger has been described by police as the leader of a Jewish underground bent on turning Israel into a theocracy. He is considered an early leader of Israel’s “hilltop youth” — young people who move to settlement outposts, resist evacuation attempts and have been known to carry out hate crimes on Palestinian, Christian and Israeli targets.

Ettinger was the first suspect to be arrested after a rash of extremist attacks on Palestinians and other non-Jews in Israel and the West Bank in 2015, notably the torching of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee and the firebombing of a Palestinian home in Duma that killed three people.

— Jacob Magid